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THE DEICIDES. 





-ANALYSIS 


THE LIFE OF JESUS, 


AND OF THE 


SEVERAL PHASES OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 
_.IN THEIR RELATION TO JUDAISM. 


J. COHEN. 


ANNA MARIA GOLDSMID. 


FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. 





BALTIMORE?) 3332733723333 
DEUTSCH AND COMPANY, 


187 3. 


Hear, 0 Isracl, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.—Devt. vi. 4. 
You shall have no other God before me.—Ex. xx.: DEUT. v. 


> 
Take ye, therefore, good heed unto yourselves, for ye saw no manner of 
likeness on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of 
the fire.—Deout. iv. 15. | 


“T believe, with a perfect faith, that God is not corporeal, and that He 
cannot be likened to any material form, nor be subject to changes incident to 
matter.” 





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PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE. 


OnE great fact alone would have been sufficient to 
induce the Publishers to bring this work to the 
notice of the American thinking public, even 
though no other motive had impelled them to this 
step. This great fact is given expression by the 
author in the course of the work itself, when he 
says in his introduction, that “Weare living in an 
epoch of religious crisis.” 

Such is indeed the case. Strauss and Renan, 
together with numerous co-adjutors, not only in 
Germany and France, but elsewhere on the con- 
tinent, in England and also in this country, have 
conveyed the many and diverse rays of critical 
thought into which the -exegetic study of the 
Gospels has divided the Protestant world, into 
somewhat of a common focus. All methods of 
criticism, all degrees of analysis, and all shades of 
. belief and disbelief have, in a more or less definite 
form, found their expression. The interest which 
has thus been centered upon this field of inquiry 
has been such as to give the subject-matter of it a 
degree of prominence to which it had never before . 
attained. The enormous editions of all these works 
which have found sale since their publication give 


4.42339 


Vive. PREFACE. 


some idea of the extent to which this subject, so 
long the special province of theology, has been 
relegated to the domain of philosophic inquiry. 

We have said that.all phases of criticism had 
found an expression; but no, still another side of 
the question remained to be discussed. All of the 
labors above alluded to have started from one or 
the other of the various standpoints of the Christian 
world. The discussion concerned Christianity and 
Judaism, and Judaism had not yet spoken. To use 
the words of the Chief Rabbi of Paris, Rev. ZADoK 
KAHN, quoted by the translator in her preface: 
“Amid the discussions of which the Synagogue 
alone forms the subject, ought the Synagogue alone 
to remain silent?” No; and the time has now come, 
when the light which a review of the subject from 
this standpoint will shed upon it, can be fully ap- 
preciated by the thinking world. | 

As a most thorough and able exposition of this 
important side of the great question at issue the 
work herewith submitted will commend itself to 
every student of theology, religion and_ history. 
It fills a hiatus long known and recognized, and 
supplies a want long felt and realized in this 
department of philosophic research. 

We cannot refrain from calling attention to the 
novel and peculiar method of criticism which the 
subject receives at the hands of the author. As far 
from following in the footsteps of Strauss and the 
other prominent writers who, in their review of the 
subject have laid aside all the claims of the Gospels 
to authenticity, he has not only admitted this claim, 
but taken them as his authority and sources of history. 


PREFACE. vil 


This adds greatly to the value of the work asa 
contribution to the literature of the subject. His 
criticism, while searching in its method, and 
straightforward in its expression has yet none of 
the flavor of iconoclasm about it. On the contrary 
the whole work gives expression to a pietist’s 
views, whose very reverence for his subject makes 
him logical, and whose very object precludes all 
dogmatism. And while Christianity is everywhere 
thus reverentially treated, the work is yet a masterly 
assertion of the great truths of Judaism, and so 
clearly and forcibly are these principles set forth 
and illustrated that for those not fully versed in 
this matter, the book cannot fail to be a source of 
information not elsewhere to be found. 

The author, whom the Publishers have thus the 
honor of introducing to the American Public ranks 
high in Paris, as a Journalist, and as an Exegetist 
and thorough Theologian. His work has passed 
through several editions in the French original, and 
we hope this American edition of the English trans- 
lation will be favorably received by the Public. 


BALTIMORE, November 1873. 


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INTRODUCTION, 


FIRST CHAPTER. 


Strauss and Renan—Crisis in all Religious Dogma—Spirit of 
Toleration and Conciliation—Rationalism and Dogmatism— 
Aim of this Work—Reply to various Objections—Intemper- 
ate Criticisms—Authenticity of the Gospels—The Pharisees 
and the Miracles considered from the stand-point of the 
Divinity of Jesus. 

I, 


WHEN I published the first edition of this treatise, the 
work elicited a manifestation of opinion, both adverse 
and favorable, sufficient to produce in me the conviction, 
that it responded to the peculiar condition of mind and 
belief now prevailing aroundus. All subsequent circum- 
stances have tended to corroborate this impression. 
Questions especially which relate to the Divinity the 
teachings, and the mission ofthe Founder of Christianity, 
have of late assumed an important character. 

Not in Germany alone, the land in future to be re- 
cognized as the classic ground of philosophic religious 
criticism, where freedom of enquiry, after evoking Pro- 
testantism, has conducted it, by the force of irresistible 
reasoning, to the negation of all mystical doctrines ;— 
not there alone, but in France also this great question 
has come to be discussed with a degree of earnestness 
and gravity that cannot be misconstrued. 

Under a form suited respectively to the genius of the 
two peoples amidst whom they write, the works of 
Strauss and Renan alike embody the final deductions 

i : 


li INTRODUCTION. 


from a long antecedent series of ideas, opinions and 
doctrines, of which they set forth the logical conclusion. 
Herein especially lies the secret of the extraordinary 
sensation awakened in the public mind of Germany and 
France, by the hypotheses of these writers. on the life of 
Jesus. 

The German School has been led on, by gradual and 
almost imperceptible degrees, to fritter away in detail 
the narratives and traditions of the Gospel. Every por- 
tion of the New Testament has been subjected to a 
close analysis, to a severe and scrutinising exegesis, 
and has been successively denuded of its authenticity, 
and invested with the character of an ingenious myth, 
or of a legend devoid of all historical basis. Thus, 
all that remained for Strauss to do was to collate, 
sum up, and arrange the fragmentary weapons of 
destruction prepared to his hand. Great sensation 
was produced when he thus disclosed to Germany, the 
point of scepticism which she had insensibly reached. 
German Exegesis recognized its own image, and was 
loud in its praise of a work, which was but the mirror 
in which the light of all its PERiPn? criticism was re- 
flected and concentrated. 

But the ponderous erudition, the form and the style 
of Strauss’s work militated against the dissemination and 
the influence of his views in France. For French 
‘readers, the true Athenians of modern times, require 
greater charm of style, a more agreeable manner, more 
lightness than depth, more cleverness than science. To 
prove does not suffice; a writer must please those who 
are far more attracted perhaps, by brilliancy of form, 
than by scientific force of reasoning. 

Mr. Renan possesses this essentially French quality in 
an eminent degree. He has imparted to German science, 
with which all his works are strongly imbued, much 
vivacity and picturesqueness of diction, a form replete 
with grace and attractiveness, and by these he has won 


INTRODUCTION. - il 


for himself great popularity and the right of citizenship, 
on this side of the Rhine. His polemical studies, his 
philological and historical labours, his philosophical and 
religious theories, have the charm and the interest ofa ro- 
mance. But, reader, beware! Though clothed in a lighter 
and more brilliant dress, he is, as are all the German 
critics, the formidable enemy ofall tradition, ofall dogma. 

Strauss assails all secular beliefs with a ponderous 
battle-axe. Renan pierces them with a finely pointed. 
sword, thrusting it up to the hilt, while he dazzles the 
spectators by the rapidity of his passes and the skill of 
his fencing. But if the weapons employed differ, the 
wounds they inflict are of equal depth and severity. 

Where Strauss seeks to prove laboriously; Renan 
asserts, and evades the trouble of demonstrating. But 
both alike subvert the ancient faith, and pluck from the 
brow of Christianity its diadem of Divinity. , 

In the Life of Jesus, by Strauss, the author revels ina 
super-abundance of argument and proof. 

In the life of Jesus, by Renan, historical criticism plays 
but a secondary part. The author, relying on his ima- 
gination, relates to his readers the history of the human 
existence of the son of Mary, such as he represents it to 
himself, or presumes it to have been, having no regard 
to the Gospel narratives, and making no attempt to in- 
vestigate and discuss them. 

Skillful strategist ! How well he understands his public 
and his age. 

What he sought to produce, what he has produced, 
is a popular book, in which the profound scholar is lost 
in the narrator; a book which would repel no reader by 
a display of fastidious and complicated erudition, but 
one which would be acceptable to the majority, by means 
of its simplicity of thought and its graces of style. 

The Christ thence evolved, has no divine attribute 
save the loftiness of his genius. He is, in fact, a superior 
man, an amiable doctor, a great reformer, an admirable 


iv INTRODUCTION. 


moralist. To him pertains a brilliant place among the 
sages who, from the beginning of time, have been the 
pioneers on the path of infinite progress which the 
human race is destined to tread. By the emission of 
great truths, such as elevate man to.a divine ideal, he 
takes rank with Confucius, Bouddha, Sakya-Mouni, 
Socrates, Moses ; though greater than any of these, more 
divinely inspired, yet living the same life as they lived, 
and employing as they did, means purely’ human, 
in the service of the sublime and glorious cause to which 
he devoted himself, and for which he died. 

Assuredly this is not the Christ of the Gospel, nor of 
the Church-fathers, nor of the solemn “Credo” of the 
Christian world. But Mr. Renan concerns himself little 
about justifying the portrait he has sketched of his sub- 
ject; he is content to paint it after his own manner, and 
boldly exhibits his work to the public gaze. 

Well, the learned may have felt surprise and believers 
indignation, at the sudden and extraordinary popularity 
attained by this work. But to deny it is impossible. 

Is it the consequence of the imprudent animosity of 
which this book was the object? Or is it due to the irre- 
sistible curiosity which forbidden fruit ever excites? No! 
but to a much deeper and more serious cause. 

As the work of Strauss in Germany, so that of Renan 
in France, fell in with a singular concurrence of facts 
-and with peculiar circumstances. The latter imparted 
form and substance to certain vague opinions floating 
about in the hazy atmosphere of the old forms of religion, 
It rallied round a clearly defined idea, many uncertain 
intellects that had long been detached from orthodox 
creeds, and gave them a fixed stand-point. Where be- 
lievers saw profanation, modern sceptics beheld a solu- 
tion of their doubts and difficulties. This was the real 
cause of the angry excitement it awakened in the former, 
of the enthusiasm it kindled in the latter. It is the 
revealing symptom of the revolution going on in modern 


« 
INTRODUCTION. Vv 


“ 


creeds, and of which the reality cannot be doubted, 
inasmuch as it has been but too often indicated and 
denounced by the Roman Catholic Church, through the 
voice of all its Pontiffs. 


II. 


YES; we have evidently arrived at an epoch of religious 
crisis. 

Christianity has been engaged during the last three 
centuries, in a hand-to-hand struggle with a formidable 
opponent. This adversary has made serious breaches 
in its defences, and that field of faith is strewn with ruins. 
I will not discuss whether Protestantism, as the advo- 
cates of free enquiry affirm, involves progress, or, 
whether it is, as fervent Roman Catholcs declare retro- 
gressive. But I do know that it is an indefatigable de- 
stroyer, and that under its repeated strokes, vast gaps 
are gradually produced in the Christian economy; even 
such as were wrought of old by the glowing words of the 
first Apostles in the elysium of Paganism. 

What will be the issue of this work of revolution is 
known to God alone. But those who believe that 
a humanity capable of endless perfection, will never halt 
on its march of progress, will with difficulty be persuaded 
that evil and choatic darkness can be the fatal result of 
the new spirit and the new ideas which Protestantism 
has embedded in the soil of religious communities, 

And what imparts to this great crisis its extreme se- 
riousness is, that it acts upon the fundamental principle 
of society, as on that of creeds; on the domain of poli- 
tics and morals, as on that of religion. | 

Individual right, the offspring of free enquiry, is be- 
coming more and more the elementary basis of social 
organisation. No authority, no law, no belief, is im- 
posed. The true legitimacy of modern governments is 
held to reside in their having been constituted and sanc- ; 
tified by universal suffrage, which is virtually the sove=| 


vi INTRODUCTION. 


reignty of the individual. The legislator no longer 
recognises a State religion ; and the equality ofall creeds 
is universally proclaimed and respected. “Believe or 
die,” is no longer said. To the conscience of every 
citizen is left the liberty of its conviction. 

Eclecticism has come back to be the watchword of 
modern philosophy, as the Alexandrian School became 
the bridge that connected the old Pagan world with 
dawning Christianity. No doctrine is prohibited, no 
system absolutely condemned; the aim is to combine 
them, to bring them into harmony, and to deduce from 
them certain general truths easy of acceptance by all 
impartial and candid minds. 

Philosophy has not broken with faith, but it has thrown 
off its trammels in order to ascend from blind belief, to 
that only which can be clearly demonstrated. Formerly 
the slave of theology (anczlla theologi@), philosophy now 
claims to be its equal in its search after, and its declara- 
tion of, truth. As philosophy requires to know the | 
mysteries of life, of creation, of the divine nature itself, 
it demands in like manner, the demonstration of all 
ancient dogma. In a word, philosophy has removed 
the pivot of all belief and has made it to rest on reason 
alone. 

Rationalism is, in the realm of religion, what eclecti- 
cism is in that of philosophy. It rejects only the incom- 
prehensible and the mysterious, but it accepts all which 
is proved to be just and true in everychurch and in evrey 
religion. : 


III. 


IF we examine ourselves with candour, we shall find the 
principle of toleration deeply .impressed on our con- 
sciences, We say to ourselves, that if men really desired 
this, they would find more easily than is at first apparent, 
points of agreement in certain fundamental principles 
which, after all, form the really solid basis of all creeds. 


INTRODUCTION. vii 


All rest on two sublime and glorious truths, which no 
idolatry has had the power to weaken—truths which dis- 
play the most universal and the most resplendent of re- 
velations, the love of God and the love of our neighbour. 
To these, no religion, no men, hesitate to assent. All 
agree in believing in a God the Creator, in morality and 
in virtue. 

Division, and with division the conflict of passion, 
begins where human intelligence endeavors to pass 
beyond these elementary truths, and to penetrate into 
the dark regions of infinitude and eternity; when it 
would substitute for reason which proves, dogmatism 
which enforces; when not satisfied with admitting the 
“Great first Cause” of all that exists, it seeks also to 
define that Cause, its nature and attributes; when it dares 
to combine with the idea of God, the image and the re- 
presentation of His Divinity; when it invests that Being 
who is pre-eminently invisible, infinite and immaterial, 
with a personality more or less resembling the forms 
an old 
man with a white beard, a fanciful incarnation, as in the 
Indian forms of worship, or a mysterious Trinity, accord- 
-ing to Christian doctrine. Doubt extends and controversy 
overspreads the earth, when we seek to pierce the secret 
designs of an inscrutable Providence, when we afhrm 
what it was and-what it wrought before the visible uni- 
verse was called forth out of chaos, when we have the 
audacity to teach what it destines for us beyond the tomb, 
when we have the presumption to proclaim a hell anda 
purgatory, the existence of eternal flames and endless 
beatitude, Elysian fields traversed by sages, Styx and 
Acheron, where the wicked are punished; delightful 
gardens, where the just enjoy unfailing pleasures in the 
embraces of celestial Houris. 

Here faith is staggered, the mind becomes confused, 
and reason enters its protest. Where is truth? Where 
is error? Where is the irresistible light? And peoples, 





viii INTRODUCTION. 


of one mind as they are with regard to the idea of God 
and the sense of duty, range themselves under hostile 
banners, become intolerant and fanatical, anathematise, 
contend with, and destroy each other, in order to impose 
on each other the acceptance of principles, which can 
neither be understood, nor demonstrated. 

Such is the painful history of religious dogma. As long 
as society has existed, nothing has prevailed throughout 
our sad humanity, save confusion and strife in reference 
to these insoluble questions. 

- During the last half century and especially during the 
last few years, tendencies to fusion and to candid enquiry 
into the various existing beliefs have arisen among all 
parties. Ingenuous minds of all creeds have evinced a 
disposition, not to deny absolutely all that is mysterious 
and supernatural, but to keep aloof from obscure pro- 
blems in order to offer each other a hand on the neutral 
ground of moral ideas and incontestable truths, which 
are, like the elements of all nature, the common patri- 
mony of the human race. Holy harmony of hearts and 
souls, which would mark the advent of the reign of God 
on earth, if it should succeed in re-establishing here 
below, pristine union and brotherhood. 

Renan’s “Life of Jesus,” by divesting the founder of 
Christianity of all that is mysterious in his history, by 
clothing him with a humanity characterised by an ideal 
sublimity, but wholly devoid of all that is incomprehen- 
sible or divine, presents a striking indication of the spirit 
of our age in matters of religion; and the reception 
accorded to that work, clearly shows the true direction of 
public feeling in this domain of mental enquiry. 


IV. 


THOUGH far inferior to that of its forerunner, the popu- 
larity attained by the work that I offer anew to the public, 
is in my view, a like significant sympton of the actual 


INTRODUCTION. ix 


state of minds and creeds. My object is far from pos- 
sessing the importance of that which Renan and Strauss 
doubtless, had in view. My sole desire has been to raise 
my voice on behalf of the Hebrew people, of the powerful 
religious race to which I belong, and to combat energe- 
tically the prejudices to which the inexplicable accusation 
of DEICIDE under which they have laboured during 
more than eighteen hundred years, has subjected them. 

In the first edition the aim of this book is defined 
thus :-— 


The Gospel text has produced in me a profound con- 
viction, that the non-recognition of a God in the founder 
of Christianity, cannot, by possibility, be made a matter 
of serious reproach to the Jews of the Herodian age. If 
they were mistaken on this point, their mistake was 
made in good faith. In fact, Jesus, from Causes which 
it would be foreign to my plan to discuss, did not will 
that they should be convinced, either of his mission, or 
of his divinity. 

“In entering upon the demonstration of these truths, 
I appeal to. the good faith and the justice of my readers. 
I pray them not to pass judgment, either on the author, 
or on his work, until they have honestly examined the 
authentic proofs on which I rely. Above all, I request — 
them not to form an exaggerated estimate of the aim of 
this book, and not to impute to me aggressive intentions, 
which are far alike from my head and my heart. 

“I seek not to combat either the principles of Chris- 
tianity, or the acts ofits founder. I stand up in defence of 
an unhappy nation, that has-been persecuted for centu- 
ries as being guilty of the crime of Deicide. I search 
attentively through all the inculpatory documents of the 
suit cited against them, and I ask myself whether it is 
true that this nation did commit such a crime, above all 
had they the wish to commit it ; and if not, can they be 
held responsible for it before God and man, before the 
tribunal of history and that of posterity? : 

“But while seeking to’establish in favour of Judaism, 
the unadmitted truth, I neither discuss, nor attack any of 
the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. Ido not say 
to the faithful among Christians, ‘You are wrong to be- 
lieve in the divinity of Christ, in his birth, his life, his 
death, and his supernatural resurrection.’ I do not say 


x INTRODUCTION. 


to them, ‘Your faith is a falsehood and an absurdity.’ 
I do not endeavour, as so many other philosophers and 
so many other historians, such as Strauss and the 
German school, have endeavoured, to disprove the au- 
thenticity of the Gospels and even the very existence © 
and the biography of Jesus Christ himself. On the con- 
trary, | admit as the starting-point of my investigations, 
the truth of the Gospel narrative and of its most im- 
eee passages. It will not assuredly be expected that 
, a believing disciple of the faith of Israel, a sincere 
aes care and adorer of the One only and invisible 
God, should admit without reserve the divinity of Jesus 
and the reality of his Messianic mission. But my critique 
does not necessarily involve anything directly contrary 
to this hypothesis, however manifestly it may be opposed 
to every principle of my religious convictions. : 

“I simply say to all men of candour and good sense, 
‘Come, let us examine together. Here is the Gospel, the 
book revered by the Christian world; here is the only tes- 
timony remaining to us of- the intercourse of Jesus with 
the Jewish people. Let us admit that Jesus was really the 
son of God who had come to save Israel, and with Israel, 
the human race. Let us admit that he was really the Mes- 
siah predicted by the prophets. Does it result from the 
Gospel narrative that the Jews of the time of Herod were 
aware of this divine nature and of this sacred mission ? 
Herein lies the whole question; for, if visited by a God, 
the Jews had not the consciousness of his divinity—if, in | 
proceeding against him and putting him to death in ac- 
cordance with their law, they did not and they could not, 
know that they were killing a God who had come ex- 
pressly to deliver them—how could they be held guilty 
of the crime of Deicide? How could they have been 
accursed, how could they have been punished for a crime, 
which they had no intention of committing ? 

“Or again, if it had been written in the designs of the 
Eternal, that it was necessary a Divine being should die 
as an atoning victim, in order that the sins of men should 
be expiated, and if the Jews had been chosen to accom- 
plish this bloody sacrifice, how could they be guilty, when 
they were but the blind instruments of the almighty will 
of God ?’”’ 


These views and these conclusions have met with a 
most cordial reception from a much larger number of 
serious minds than I could have ventured to anticipate. 


INTRODUCTION. xi 


- People desired to learn what a devoted adherent of 
Judaism thought on that great question, the life and the 
divinity of Jesus; and, as it has been seen I hope, that 
the moderation with which I expressed my opinions, be- 
trayed no other desire save that of setting forth the truth 
which long years of reciprocal hatred had obscured, I 
have received, and I preserve with pleasure, many pre- 
cious evidences of sympathy. 

This book, on the other hand, has been subjected to 
severe criticisms, some emanating from the most violent 
outbursts of a faith which permits neither examination 
nor contradiction; others serious and courteous in their 
expression, and belonging to a higher order of ideas. 
There are also some who reproach me with demanding, 
as did the Pharisees of the time of Jesus, material proofs 
of a divinity, which revealed itself far more by its moral 
splendour than by external and physical signs. Others 
again blame me for having, while I admitted the authen- 
ticity of the Gospel, neglected to cite all the exegetic 
labours of the last fifty years which prove that the bio- 
graphies of Jesus are all apocryphal, and that nothing 
certain is known concerning his life, his birth, and his 
death. 

In the face of opinions so conflicting, I think it is 
useful to define my views and convictions with greater 
precision. f 


V. 


I EXCLUDE at once from this discussion the criticisms 
first alluded to above. They grow out of deep and in- 
flexible convictions, which I do not seek to offend and ° 
cannot expect to modify. My aim is not to convince of 
their error sincere believers in the Christian religion ; 
that is a matter of conscience, with respect to which I 
have nothing to blame, nor to attempt. Only they do 
appear to me to lack justice and good sense, when they 


xii INTRODUCTION. 


evince irritation at the mere handling by a son of the 
Hebrews, of that mysterious question—the Divinity of 
Jesus. 

Is it not this question alone which has separated 
Christianity from Judaism during eighteen hundred 
years, and has produced an irreconcilable difference 
between the two faiths? Is it not this question which 
has served as the pretext for the persecutions that the 
exiles of Zion have suffered, in every part of the Christian 
world ? 

_ Thanks to the progress of civilisation, thanks to the 
well-nigh universal triumph of ideas of liberty and 
equality, the descendants of Israel at this day have re- 
conquered almost everywhere, their rights as men andas 
citizens. Is it not natural that among them some voices 
should be raised to defend them at last, against the accu- 
sations which have caused their long martyrdom? Is it 
not just, that their cause should at last be brought and 
argued before the tribunal of public opinion, and that , 
it should be ascertained, whether or not their fathers 
were guilty of this strange crime of Deicide—a crime, 
the expiation of which, it is sought to visit eternally on 
their posterity. ; | 

But I do not hope for so much candour on the part 
of those to whom I refer. They do not investigate them- 
selves, and they dislike any attempt at investigation on the 
part of others ; they will not accept this great conquest 
of modern times—liberty of conscience, which allows 
to other creeds, not to be aggressive, (this would be an 
ingratitude and a wrong), but to exist, and to defend 
themselves against secular prejudices. 

It is not then for them that I seek to explain more 
fully the idea of this book and the point of view from 
which I write. I dismiss from my mind passions which 
reason not, and I consider only the opinions of those 
who have honored me by a serious discussion. 


INTRODUCTION. xiii 


VI. 


I HAVE said that I have been blamed for admitting the 
Gospel text unreservedly. 


Certainly, after the vast critical labors of which this 
text has formed the subject, I might have indulged, in 
“my turn, in objections in future easily raised, and ina 
display of borrowed erudition on the authenticity of the 
Gospels. But I should have found no advantage in this 
course for the aim I had in view, and my conclusions 
would have lost in clearness of demonstration, what they 
might have gained scientifically. In fact, that aim was 
not to convince those who do not believe in the histo. 
rical truth of the Gospel; for persons holding these 
views, the life and death of Jesus are alike matters of un- 
certainty ; and thence it ensues, that the alleged crime ot 
Deicide could not, in their opinion, ever have been com- 
mitted. But those to whom it is of the last importance 
to prove that this accusation is devoid of any real basis, 
*are those who do firmly believe in the historical accuracy 
of the facts recorded by the four Evangelists. 


If my arguments in favour of the Hebrew people are 
valid, they are so, because I accept the very texts on 
which the faith of the most fervent Christians is grounded. 
For out of these very texts, the manifest proofis adduced, 
that Jesus never revealed himself as God to the Jews of 
his epoch: that he systematically concealed from them 
the signs of his divinity and of his Messiahship (admitting 
even that these signs were really produced,) and of his 
Messianic mission; finally, that nothing either in his acts, 
or in his words corresponded with the traditional belief 
idea, or hopes prevailing with regard to this long expected 
deliverer, Viewed in this light, not only was a criticism 
on the Gospels superfluous, but on the contrary, the text 
was to me of incalculable importance. 


Besides, I must here confess that I do not share in 
the doubts which have been raised as to the authenticity 


Xiv INTRODUCTION. 


of the Books ofthe New Testament. The contradictions 
even, which are found between the four biographies of 
Jesus, appear to me to be evidence of truth; for if the 
Gospels dated from an earlier period, and if their colla- 
tion was not the work of those whose names they bear, 
the pious fraud to which it is supposed they owe their 
creation, would have been moreskillfullycarried out, and 
would have imparted to the narrative the very unity 
which it lacks. 

Notwithstanding the silence of contemporaneous 
authors, too many circumstances and traditions testify to 
the existence of Jesus fora doubt of the fact to be ad- 
mitted. This silence proves but one thing, that Jesus 
_ produced at first, no greater impression than so many 
pseudo-Messiahs had done before, the number of these 
pretenders having been large at a period, alike of poli- 
tical and religious oppression. But that he lived, that 
he taught, and that he gathered around him ardent dis- 
ciples, whose enthusiasm survived the death of their 
master, it is, as it appears to me, impossible tc deny. 

Doubtless, in considering the Gospels, allowance must 
be made for this enthusiasm itself, and for the mental 
tendencies of each of these biographers. Seeing that these 
Gospels were not edited till after the death of Jesus, 
according to the more or less correct, the more or less 
concurrent reminiscences, of his disciples, some errors, 
perhaps, assuredly many amplifications and much exag- 
geration crept into these narratives, and developed the 
legendary, at the expense of the historical portions. But 
the basis and the principal events are evidently accurate ; 
the accessory details and the differences of form ex- 
cepted, it is easily to be demonstrated that they are re- 
produced in each of the four biographies. 

If I were permitted to propound in my turn, a hypo- 
thesis in order to account for the discrepancies to be 
found in each of these, the probable cause appears to me 
to be this:—There are three distinct periods in the de- 


INTRODUCTION. XV 


velopment of the life of Jesus, in each of which he ex- 
hibits himself under a different aspect, and in each of 
which he betrays different aspirations from those of the 
other two phases. 

In the first period he is the eloquent lbcton the bold 
reformer, the prophet who reprimands chiefs and people, 
and recalls them to the great principles of justice and 
morality. 

In the second period, he is the Messiah, the Christ 
who reveals himself to his disciples, and proclaims him- 
self to be He who is to fulfil in Israel all the promises 
of the prophets. Miracles flash around him; he lives, 
he moves, he acts amidst marvels; he is wrapped in the 
supernatural, and the phenomena of the heavens and 
the prodigies of earth appear destined to attest to mor- 
tals the presence of the messenger of the Eternal. 

Finally, in the third period, Jesus affirms his Divinity ; 
he identifies himself with God; he is the equal of the 
Father; he is God Himself; it is he who will judge the 
living and the dead. 

Jesus and his disciples attain to this mystical concep- 
tion only consecutively and by degrees. The Gospel 
narrative admits no doubt of this fact. The revelation of 
the divinity of the son of Mary was not made until he 
approached the last days of his terrestrial existence. In 
like manner his Messianic mission was not formulated 
until long after his disciples had appeared on the scene. 

Now the Evangelists exactly embody, by their respec- 
tive forms and characters, these three successive periods. 

Matthew and Mark, whose narratives seem for the 
most part to be copies of each other, are sparing of the 
marvellous. They lay much stress on the moral teaching 
of Jesus, but they do not connect any miraculous cir- 
cumstance either with his birth, or with his youth. Ac- 
cording to them, Joseph receives the command to keep 
Mary with him, and the announcement of the miraculous 
conception of her son, not in a vision, but in a dream. 


xvi INTRODUCTION. 


The idea of divinity is scarcely perceptible in the Synop- 
tics. The acts and the discourses which they attribute 
to Jesus have a human rather than a divine character. 
Evidently Matthew and Mark endeavoured especially to 
make known in Jesus a prophet, or at most, a Messiah ; 
they did not reveal in him God. 


Luke, on the contrary, appears to pertain to the 
second period of the life of Jesus. The legendary portion 
is largely developed by his pen. The heavens are agitated ; 
the heavenly host move around Christ the Saviour; the 
son of Mary is transfigured, and casts off by degrees all 
the attributes of his corporeal nature. He is not yet God 
in all His majesty, but he is more than a prophet, and 
it is clearly perceptible that ere long the revelation ofhis 
divinity will be proclaimed. 


This grand mission is reserved for John, the well- 
beloved disciple of his master, and the mysticism of pri- 
mitive Christianity. He alone furnishes us with details, 
he alone explains to us the relation in which the Jewish 
people stood to Jesus, when the latter disturbed the 
monotheistic doctrine by the affirmation of his divinity. 
He alone sees in his master nothing but God, the Word 
_ made flesh, the Infinite revealed for a moment in a finite 
form. The mystery is accomplished; Heaven has for a 
brief space ceded God to the earth ; earth has given Him 
back to Heaven, and the Father and the Son have now 
become a mysterious unity. The discourses of Jesus, 
simple and intelligible as they are in the synoptic 
Gospels, and even in the Gospel of Luke, are repro- 
duced in John under a mystic form, strange and incom- 
prehensible to the majority, and of a nature to strengthen 
the incredulity of the Hebrew people, rather than to 
convince and attract them. 

Thus the progressive march is clearly defined. In the 
narratives of Matthew and Mark, appear prominently and 
specially, the Reformer and Prophet; in that of Luke, 


INTRODUCTION. Xvil 


the Messiah accompanied by a miraculous legend ; in 
that of John, God. 

Thus where so many critics have pointed out flagrant 
contradictions, and have pronounced the text to be abso- 
lutely apocryphal, there should be recognised only the 
enevitable results of the varying stand-points on 
which the four biographers have respectively placed 
themselves. Does it follow that all these discordant 
records must be unreservedly accepted as _ historical 
truths? Far from this; but viewed inthe lightin which 
we have examined them, they are much less discrepant 
than they at first appear to be. And as, after all, it is the 
only monument that remains to us of this great and 
important epoch, we may admit without very consider- 
able difficulty, the sufficient authenticity of the principal 
facts on which they well-nigh agree, 


VII. 


INDEPENDENTLY of these points of historical criticism, 
an objection has been addressed to me of far more 
serious moral import, which affects me so closely as to 
induce me to discuss it with unreserved frankness. 

It is asserted that I am virtually a son of those Pha- 
risees on whom Jesus passed so severe a judgment, and 
who required miracles, celestial phenomena, the disrup- 
tion of the elements, and a host of supernatural occur- 
rences to convince them of the divinity of the son of 
Mary. His divine principles of justice and charity, his 
self-devotion to the whale human race, his law of love 
and mercy, it is argued, are more salient revelations of 
his being God himself, than physical phenomena ; and 
one must be blind indeed, not to see it. Here mutual 
understanding is indispensably necessary. 

I do not discuss the relation in which Jesus stood 
to the Jews of ‘his age, as a philosopher: I merely 
seek to ascertain what that relation was, as a historian, 

Cc ; 


nt 


xviii INTRODUCTION. 


by the aid of the only documents that remain to us. 
Now these documents show irrefutably that the Messiah 
promised to the inhabitants of Judea, the liberator an- 
nounced by the prophets, was to reveal himselt by certain 
characteristic signs, both natural and supernatural, 
which were to constitute, in accordance with the tradi- 
tions of the Hebrew people, the striking proofs of his 
mission. 

I have carefully enumerated the several articles of the 
popular belief in this respect, and I have shown that not 
one of the conditions by which the Hebrews might know 
and proclaim the promised Messiah, was realised in the 
person of Jesus. I have also proved by unimpeachable 
texts, that Jesus and the Apostles shared this popular 
belief in the necessity of certain revealing signs. If the 
son of Mary, from motives which it is needless for me to 
seek to define, did not, during his lifetime, fulfil the ma- 
terial conditions of his Messianic mission, he promised 
their realisation to his disciples on the occasion of a 
second and early advent. To judge of facts and ideas 
removed from us by the lapse of several centuries, we 
must necessarily place ourselves mentally in the centre 
of the circumstances amidst which they arose. 

_ But I go further still, and I request the particular at- 
tention of my readers to the chapter in which I treat the 
question of the miracles attributed by the Gospel to 
Jesus. They will therein perceive, that according to the 
unquestioned doctrines of the Judaism of that age, these 
miracles were inevitably devoid of importance so far as 
they concern the divinity of Jesus; and far from blaming 
the Pharisean doctors, and far from accusing them, as the 

_ Gospel does, of evincinga narrow and coarse materialism, 
we ought to admire the largeness and liberality which 
distinguished the Pharisean doctrine in this field of 
enquiry. 

Miracles apart, there remain doubtlessly the moral 

_teachings and the great truths, so admirably elucidated 


ww 
«< 


INTRODUCTION. Xix 


by the prophet of Galilee. I have studied this serious 
question with the deepest and most scrupulous attention, 
and the investigation has furnished me with evident 
proof, that there is not a single precept, asingle thought, 
either in the discourses of Jesus, or in the maxims ofthe 
Gospel, which had not been set forth long before his age, 
often clothed in language far more striking by the Bible, 
by the prophets, the philosophers, the moralists, and the 
doctors of Judea. 

To those who reproach the Hebrew people with having 
required proofs from Jesus, this double observation pre- 
sents an ample reply. Here, in fact, an unanswerable 
dilemma presents itself. 

How could the Jews recognise in Jesus God incarnate, 
save by irresistible revelations? Then, in what did these 
revelations consist, if Jesus gave nothing to the Hebrew 
people save what they had long before received from 
their legislators, their prophets and their sages, without 
one of these ever having pretended to be God, or the 
son of God? 

How again could the Jews recognise the Messiah in 
Jesus, but by the fulfilment of all the signs and of all the 
promises predicted by the Messianic prophets? Now, 
not only did Jesus fail to give a single proof of his mis- 
sion, not only did he persist in obstinately refusing this 
evidence, which after the most painful suspense he was 
implored to furnish; but he did not accomplish in the 
presence of the Hebrew people any of the predictions 
the sacred books contain. 

Let those who so bitterly reproach the Jews who were 
contemporary with Jesus, for having dared to demand 
some revealing signs, candidly examine their own mind. 
If even in the present age of extreme spiritualism, a 
being bearing the human form, were to proclaim him- 
self God and the son of God, in vain would he preach the 
most sublime morality; a crowd of modern Pharisees 
would not be satisfied with that mysterious declaration, 


xx INTRODUCTION. 


but would demand striking, positive, and palpable proofs 
of its justification. I know the spirit of my age well 
enough to affirm that this is a truth, and I deem it an 
act of injustice to blame the old Pharisees of eighteen 
centuries passed, for entertaining doubts, which would 
appear natural in our age of civilization and progress. 

Further, I have no hesitation in stating my opinion on 
this point, quite unreservedly. 


INTRODUCTION. xxi 


SECOND CHAPTER. 


Causes of the Incredulity of the Jews as to the Divinity and the 
Messianic Mission of Jesus—The two Messianic Missions— 
Universal Aspirations of Judaism—The God of the Hebrews 
—Jewish Philosophy—The Immortality of the Soul—The 
Kingdom of God—The Spiritual and the Temporal—Pro- 
vidence and Liberty—The Unity of the Human Race— 
Brotherhood and Neighbourly Love—Influence of Jewish 
Ideas on Social Progress—Their Future. 


I. 


THE principal cause of the incredulity of the Jews con- 
cerning the divinity of Jesus was—Jesus himself. 

The unalterable faith of Israel, its single dogma, the 
basis of its social and religious existence, is—the ABSoO- 
LUTE UNITY and INVISIBILITY of God. My ideas on the 
future which is reserved for this profound belief—a 
belief more philosophic than dogmatic—will be set 
forth further on; but whatever may be thought of it, it 
is incontestible that this has ever been the supreme 
law, the strength and the hope of the Hebrew people. 
They have lived for it and by it; for this they have never 
ceased to struggle and to suffer. Hence the material 
appearance of the God who, according to the. tradition 
of the Bible, had declared to Moses, “No man living 
can see my face and live; and also, “I am seen only 
through my works,” the incarnation of a God, a pure 
Spirit, of whom the great Hebrew legislator had said— 
“Take heed unto your souls, for ye saw no similitude 
when God spoke unto you at Sinai out of the midst of 
the fire,’ must have offended all preconceived ideas and 
notions; in a word, the personification of the uncreated 


XXii INTRODUCTION 


principle was opposed to all the ideas held by the inflex- 

ible guardians of Monotheism, and must have excited 
them against him who, under a human and perishable 
form, set himself up as the equal of the Eternal and the 
Infinite. Thus, this feeling was not long in showing it- 
self with great violence. The popular indignation and 
the general mental condition are very faithfully port- 
rayed to us in the Gospel of John, especially in the very 
eharacteristic episode in which the Jews desire to stone 
Jesus, because “being man he pretends to be God.’ Neither 
miracles nor moral truth could stand in Israel, in face of 
the attack thus made on the first great principle of the 
Unity and the Immateriality of the Divine One. © 

The Jews were then, and despite the stake and perse- 
cution, have ever remained, essentially and eminently 
spiritualists in their convictions concerning the Deity. 
Christianity fancied it could compromise, to a certain 
extent, with the anthropomorphic doctrines of the Pagan 
world; but Judaism has ever guarded the purity of the 
Monotheistic faith with unconquerable energy, convinced 
that that faith will become, sooner or later, by means of 
the inevitable progress of reason and conscience, the 
law of the whole human race. If, as will afterwards be 
seen, the Gospel offered itself to the Roman world and 
to Paganism as a manifestation of God on earth and a 
wonderful revelation,—for the Hebrews it discovered 
neither truth nor progress, for it contaminated the 
Monotheistic principle, on which alone, in its indestruc- 
tibility, the faith and the mission of Israel repose. 

The Jews are generally accused of having closed 
their eyes to the light. In the sight of the incorruptible 
- guardians of the Divine Unity and Spirituality, the mys- 
teries of Christianity were not light, but darkness. 


II. 


Ir the belief of the Jews in the One Immaterial and 
Infinite God is absolutely incompatible with the divinity 


INTRODUCTION. XXili 


of Jesus, their Messianic dogmas are equally inconsistent 
with the character of the Messiah, such as the Christian 
doctrine proclaims it to be. 

The advent of Messiah, according to the prophetic 
traditions of Judaism, is far less indicative of the appear- 
ance of an All-powerful Being, King, Prophet, or God, 
than of the inauguration of an epoch of moral, religious 
and social grandeur. Doubtless, the hopes of Israel do 
not divide this new era from that of the re-establishment 
of Jewish nationality, and the restoration of the throne 
of David in Jerusalem, newly arisen from its ruins; but 
if the ancient capital of the kings of Judah is destined 
to become the centre of the hopes, and the “house of 
prayer’ of all peoples, this is but a secondary incident in 
the comprehensive and universal revolution which will 
then have been accomplished. The essential character- 
istic of the Messianic epoch will be the declaration and 
the recognition of the UNITY and SPIRITUALITY of 
God by all the nations of the earth. Image and material- 
istic worship will be no more. ‘On that day,” say the 
Prophets, “the Lord will be One, and His name One.” 
And as a consequence of this faith in the DIVINE 
UNITY, the Unity of the human race, the fraternal union 
of all the children of God, will become the holy doctrine 
of society and of individuals. No more war, no more 
devastating armies, but everywhere harmony, equality, 
peace, and prosperity. I shall cite later.the striking 
prophecies which foretold, more than thirty centuries ago, 
this era of universal well-being, concord, and happiness, 
which has ever remained the hope and the aim of the 
Hebrew people. Judaism does not expect the domina- 
tion of the whole world by means of the advent of the - 
Messiah; from that advent it expects the victory of 
Monotheism. It has the conviction, that by its means 
all men will be initiated into the eternal truths, which, 
ever since the revelation at Sinai, have been the heritage 
of the sons of Israel. It will then at once be understood, 


XXiV INTRODUCTION. 


that the corporeal and terrestria] apparition of a being 
whe proclaimed himseli tc be God, was irreconcilable 
with the grander idea of a Messiah, such asthe Hebrews 
conceived, and still conceive it to be. 

Since Judaism professed that the absolute Unity of 
God would infallibly become the dogma ofall the families 
of the earth, this apparent duality of the divine principle 
must naturally have been rejected by it, as a flagrant 
contradiction to its religious faith. 

Christianity, carried away by its mystic tendencies, 
could adopt doctrines respecting the Messiah which have 
no relation with those of the Hebrew prophets, or with 
the secular traditions of the Jews; but the Israelites are 
the fathers of the Messianic belief. Of them it was born, 
by them it has been preserved, and for them essentially 
it is that the prophecies of Holy Writ on this subject, 
are to be realised. It may be reasonably presumed that 
they comprehended this doctrine more truly than the 
Roman population, just converted to Christianity, were 
capable of doing. However, in the course of this work 
it will be seen that it is not possible to apply either to 
the life, or the teaching of Jesus, the belief which pre- 
vailed in Israel in reference to the epoch of the Messiah ; 
and this further corroborates the justification of the 
resistance of the Jewish people. 

And as in the very first years of the Christian era, 
so to this day, two Messianic missions stand face to 
face, the one contending that all was accomplished 
eighteen hundred years since, by the birth, the life, 
and the death of Jesus; the other waiting, with im- 
perturbable patience, the fulfilment of the Divine pro- 
mises. What separates them even further, is their re- 
spective principle. 

The Christian Messianic theory founds the truth which 
it seeks to enforce on all humanity, upon an impenetrable 
mystery, by converting the saving Messiah into a divine 
incarnation—a verb in a material body—a God who was 


INTRODUCTION. AXV 


born, who lived, who suffered, and who died as other 
men. 

The Jewish Messianic theory, on the contrary, 
rests on no mysterious dogma. It hopes that from 
Jerusalem, once more the metropolis of the religious 
world, the rays of peaceful truth will break over all the 
peoples of the earth, reconciled by the universal pro- 
clamation which everywhere will re-establish fraternity 
and peace, and inaugurate the reign of God. 

The Christian Messianic theory teaches that the 
Messiah has already come, although the world is still 
distracted by wars, discord, tyranny, the sanguinary 
conflict of all passions, and by political and religious 
idolatry. 

The Jewish Messianic theory does not believe in 
’ the advent of Messiah until universal peace shall 
be coincident with his era, and until those laws of 
justice and love shall prevail, which were declared to be 
the providential signs of the Redeemer of mankind. 

‘T here simply state this contradiction. This is not the 
place for me to enter into judgment on it. Certain it is 
that, from the most remote period of its historical ex- 
istence, the aspirations of Judaism were not limited to 
the development of its internal and individual life. 
It considered the whole world to be its domain and its 
future empire, not under a material, but under a moral 
aspect, and this ambition has left a deep impress on all 
the principles and all the events of its history. 


III. 


CATHOLICISM, using this word in its etymological 
sense of ‘‘ Unzversal Beltef,” is, in fact, the very essence 
of Jewish Monotheism; it is coeval with its revelation 
and with its original institution, 

“In thee.” said a heavenly voice to Abraham, the first 
apostle of the Unity—“in thee shall all the peoples of 


2 


xxvi -INTRODUCTION. 


the earth be blessed.”* Almost at every page, the Pen- 
tateuch, the entire Bible, Moses and all the Prophets, 
reiterate this solemn promise, and unite indissolubly with 
the future of Israel, the future of the whole human race, 

Of all the religions of antiquity, Judaism alone has 
conceived and exalted this sublime thought of universal 
reconciliation into a dogma; it is the only one in which 
are combined, with its lofty and mysterious hopes, the 
triumph of its religious faith and the happiness of all 
the nations of the earth. | 

This it is which renders the Hebrew people a peculiar 
people, a people having a mission; this it is which in 
spite the annihilation of its political nationality—despite 
the horrible persecutions of which it has been the victim, 
imparts to its extraordinary existence, to its social per- 
manency, a grandeur which cannot fail to make a deep 
impression. Further, the expansive force which from the 
time of the Apostles Christianity has displayed, evidently 
results from the spirit of proselytism and the Messianic 
impulse imparted to it by Judaism. 

The notion of conquering the moral world and of 
converting it to the worship of God-Messiah would 
never have arisen in the mind of a Greek or a Roman. 
It could be born in the soul only ofa Jew, powerfully’ 
imbued with the hopes of the Synagogue, and convinced 
that the hour of their realisation had struck. I may ven- 
ture to add, it could have arisen in the mind of a 
Pharisee only, for in Phariseeism alone, so little under- 
stood, so unjustly decried, did the Messianic doctrine 
assume the lofty and exclusively religious character, by 
which alone its triumph could be ensured. 

I shall, doubtless, astonish many prejudiced minds, 
when I say that Phariseeism was the “Protestantism of 
the Jewish church,” and that it introduced therein a 
spirit of philosophic liberty and enlarged views, to the 





* Genesis xxii. 18 


INTRODUCTION. XXVii 


independence and height of which we are far from having 
yet attained, while at the same time, it worked a radical 
reform in religious organisation and in the narrow 
formulas of official Judaism. But I reserve the demon- 
stration of this subject fora special treatise, which I hope 
soon to publish under the title of “Zhe Pharisees.” Itis 
incontestible that the Pharisean school furnished to the 
Messianic idea, marvellously comprehensive doctrines, 
and of a nature calculated to kindle enthusiasm in its 
disciples. It is also certain, that a great spirit of proselyt- 
ism was rife among the Pharisees. According to the 
Gospel narrative,* Jesus himself reproaches them with 
it, and his view on this point is confirmed by the “Aphor- 
isms of the Sages,” f a collection of Pharisean maxims 
which strenuously enjoins the multiplying of proselytes. 

If St. Paul had not drawn his doctrines from the school 
of his Master Gamaliel, one of the luminaries of Pharisee- 
ism of his time, I doubt much whether he would have 
conceived the magnificent idea of setting forth to preach 
the Gospel to the Gentiles, an idea violently combated 
by the other Apostles, though it secured the triumph of 
Christianity. And I suppose that the famous illumina- 
tion on the road to Damascus was not a divinely inspired 
vision, but a marvellous resolution suggested to the 
young Apostle by his Pharisean training, which imparted 
to him an intuitive anticipation of the great destiny 
opening before him, if he took advantage of the 
favourable moment. 

However this may be, Judaism, from the moment it 
proclaimed by the voice of its Patriarchs the Unity of 
God, has never ceased, for a single instant, to affirm that 
sooner or later Monotheism will be the faith of the whole 
world, and to consider itself as having received from 





* Matthew xxiii. 15, ““Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, 
for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte.” 
+ Perke Aboth, “Sayings of the Fathers,” chap. iv. 2. 


XXVili INTRODUCTION. 


God himself the mission of working out his triumph. All 
the principles of its law, all the elements of its religious 
and moral dogma, are deeply marked with this all-em- 
bracing aspiration. Its doctrines are as universal as is its 
ambition. I request permission to enforce this view, 
which is of great historical importance, and of special 
signification with regard to the main aim of this book, 


IV. 


THE God of Judaism is not, as has been incorrectly 
stated, a national God, the divinity exclusively ofa small 
tribe, to whom the rest of the world are strangers. Far 
from this. He is represented to us, as the God of the 
universe, the King of kings, the Sovereign Master of 
humanity, the soul of the world. He alone created the 
heaven, the earth, and all that is therein; there is no 
other God besides Him. He isthe Only One, “He is 
that He is,” that is, the Being pre-eminently Supreme; 
the only One endowed with existence in all its plenitude; 
a Being, who hath no commencement, and will have no 
end. Hence the mysterious name by which He is 
designated, is synonymous with “ETERNAL.’* 

The Eternal declares by the voice of Moses, “I alone 
am, there is no other God beside Me; I kill and I make 
alive; I wound and I heal; and none can deliver out 
of my hand.” All the linguistic formulas by which the 
Bible portrays the might and the majesty of God, are in 
harmony with the immensity of His essence and of His 
power. The heavens declare His glory,.and the firma- 
ment is the work of His hand; infinite space is His throne, 
and the earth is His footstool: kings and peoples, at the 
sound of His voice, hastily gather themselves together 
from the extremities of the earth; the isles are as agrain 





* The name of Jehovah is, in fact, composed in Hebrew of 
the three tenses, past, present, and future of the verb to be; it 
means, he was, he is, and ever will be, 


INTRODUCTION. Xxix 


of sand weighed in the balance of His justice; the 
phenomena of nature are His ministers, obedient to His 
word. All incorporeal things must necessarily and ine- 
vitably be materialised, when we seek to paint them in 
words; yet never the human language become more 
sublime at the idea of the Divinity, than does that of the 
Bible. | 

This “God of the spirits of all flesh” (suchis the biblical 
phrase) reveals Himself in every page of the sacred 
volume, as the Sovereign of every created being. If one 
family, one race on earth was particularly chosen to 
become the depositaries of the Eternal truth, of which 
He alone is the source and focus, it was because that 
family and that people had, by a spontaneous effort of 
their conscience and their reason, preserved more faith- 
fully than any others, the primitive traditions of the 
human race, and had consequently cast aside the poly- 
theistic errors into which other men had fallen. But, 
while sanctifying this race, and calling them to be His 
chosen servants, the God of the Bible does not abandon 
the other races of man, who are equaily His creatures. 
To Israel He entrusts the mission of becoming to them 
an example, a guide, and a support on the path which > 
leads to the true, the good, and the beautiful. And the 
sacred writings incessantly recaH to the Hebrews this 
solemn mandate, and at the same time exhort them to 
consider all the rest of mankind as their brothers. 
‘‘We have but one Father, who is in heaven,” exclaims 
Malachi. ‘Has not one only God created us?” Not to 
Israel alone hath the Eternal sent his prophets, to recall 
to justice and truth those who have turned aside and 
violated the rigid laws of duty. The sacred orators, the 
inspired agents of the Divine thought, address the other 
nations likewise, in the name of the All-powerful 
Sovereign of the heavens and of the earth; they 
severely denounce Babylon, Egypt, and Assyria; they 
exhort sinful Nineveh to repentance. Long before the 


XXX INTRODUCTION, 


Gospel and St. Paul, they diaede to listening Pagans 
forgiveness of sin. 
V. 

_ In the domain of philosophy, this same largeness of 
ideas, this same universality of principle are manifest. 
Is not the doctrine of the Unity of God, in fact, the 
grandest and most complete of all philosophisms? With 
one word Moses annihilates rationalism and pantheism, 
when he says, “In the beginning God created the 
heavens andearth.” Spiritual religion in all its splendour 
is first proclaimed in the Bible; it first teaches us that 
_ God is Eternal, Invisible, Infinite, Immaterial ; it teaches: 
us the separate existence of soul and body; it is the 
Bible that discloses to us the idea of providence, ever 
active in the government of the Universe; it is the 
Bible which establishes the admirable relation of Father 
and son, between God and man, and which determines 
the aim of man’s being, and of that of the whole human 
race, when saying to the first, “Be ye holy as your Father 
in heaven is holy?” and to the second, “Strive ever 
after that blessed epoch, when truth and concord shall 
join all nations in a fraternal union.”’ By whom, then, if 
- not by the Bible, were those imperishable maxims declared 
unto the world—those splendid precepts of morality and 
of virtue, which have been its guides for nearly twothou- 
sand years? Who taught man resignation in suffering, 
humility in greatness? Who revealed to him his moral 
responsibility, here and hereafter? 

Certainly, the doubtful point as to whether the Pen- 
tateuch did or did not proclaim the doctrines of a 
future life and of the immortality of the soul, admits of 
discussion; but it is equally certain, that that doctrine 
appears after Moses, everywhere in the Bible, as one of 
the most incontestible articles of Jewish belief. The 
legend of the witch of Endor, the Book of Kings, the ~ 
Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and all the Prophets, admit of no 


INTRODUCTION. . Xxxi 


doubt that the Hebrews believed in the continued 
existence of the soul after death. Long before the age 
of Jesus, this was a characteristic doctrine of the teach- 
ings of the PMafisees, in contradistinction, on this point, 
to those of the school of the Sadducees. Thus Judaism 
has always preached the immortality of the soul. All 
that can be advanced is, that it did not set it forth from 
the beginning, either as an indispensable article of faith, 
or as a revealed dogma. Itbehoves us to explain why. 

Moses created neither an abstract philosophy, nor 
a religion for the individual ; he constituted a people, a 
society ; and psychological theories of immortality could 
assume, necessarily, but a secondary part in this com- 
prehensive achievement. Nations cannot be governed 
by the doctrine ofa future state, but by terrestrial rewards 
and punishments. Neither the constitutional rights, nor _ 
the civil or penal codes of modern peoples speak of the 
immortality of the soul. The Pentateuch, which was 
rather the social law, than the religious doctrine of the 
Hebrews, does not impart to it greater prominence. In 
adopting this course Moses obeyed a higher idea, one 
which characterises his legislation, and raises it far above 
other religions and other philosophies. 

While Christianity separates, and opposes to each 
other, the spirit and the flesh, the kingdom of God, and 
the kingdom of Czesar, Judaism has never ceased to pro- 
claim that God is the God of this world, and that He 
ceases not to act, to create, and to manifest Himself in 
the vast Universe, which is His work. He incessantly 
teaches that man is created for this life, that is, in order 
to develop all his faculties, and to work for the ameliora- 
tion and progress of the whole human race, by com- 
bining his powers and his intelligence with those of his 
fellow creatures, and by relying on the dictates of his 
conscience, his liberty, and his reason. It does not 
thence follow that Judaism ignores the eternal destiny of 
man ; but it regards him, so long as he lives his terres- 


XXXIi INTRODUCTION. 


trial life, as a link in the great chain of creation; and it 
imposes on him the mission and the duty of aiding by 
all his means, and of consecrating all his efforts to the 
triumph of the good, the useful, and of the upright, for 
himself and for all his brethren. 

This practical spirit distinguishes powerfully, and is 
the characteristic of Judaism amidst the mystical idealism 
of the religions of the East; it is this also which distin- 
guishes it from Christianity, since the latter transfers the 
true life of mortal man to a sphere beyond this world. 

“The law which I command you this day,” says the 
divine legislator to the chosen people, “is not far from 
you; it is not in heaven, that thou shouldst say, Who 
shall go up to heaven for us, in order that we may know ~ 
it and-do it? it is very nigh unto thee, in thy heart and 
in thy mind.” “See,” he adds, “I have set before you 
this day life and good, death and evil, the blessing and 
the curse; choose life, that thou and thy seed may live.’”* 
“The secret things are for God, but the revealed things 
are for us and our children for evermore.’’+ ‘“‘Take heed 
unto yourselves, that ye observe and do all the command- 
ments which I have commanded you this day, in ‘order 
that you may live and multipiy, and that you may pro- 
long your days on the land which you go to possess.’’f 

These precepts have been too frequently quoted in dis- 
paragement of Judaism, to render the assertion of their 
reality necessary. Yes, true it is that the Hebrew legis- 
lator’s essential and principal aim was to define the fun- 
damental rules of human rights and duties within the 
limits of this life; that he does not generally dwell on 
the immortality of the soul; and that he gives to this 
mysterious doctrine, whose nature exceeds the bounds 
of human intelligence, a secondary and less prominent 
positiog. Though the whole of the Bible breathes the 





* Deuteronomy xxx. 11 and foll. ¢ Ibid. xxix. 29. 
¢ Deuteronomy viii. 1; vi. 17; v. 38. 


INTRODUCTION. XXXiii 


doctrine of immortality—though the idea of eternity is 
everywhere present, even from the first days of creation 
—yet the sacred writer has ‘avoided, on this point, adog= 
matism which without doubt, appeared-to him useless 
and dangerous. He leaves this dark problem ofa future 
life in the domain of the unknown, in the free sphere of 
human discussion; his chiefaim is to organise man for 
existence here, for family life, for society, for the work 
of a progress in which he is Lngeseanlly employed here 
below. 

But is this terrestrial life to be absorbed in disgraceful 
matérialism and abject sensuality? No. The author of 
the Bible, while steering clear of the abstractions of 
mysticism, has carefully avoided the shoals of materialism. 
Man is to work for the things of this world, but he is to 
sublimate them, to glorify them by ever present idea 
of God, by love of his eternal Providence, ‘who daily 
lavished on him benefits, by the constant imitation of 
this good and merciful Father, who surroundeth all 
beings with infinite love. “Say not in-your hearts, my | 
power and the strength of my hand hath gotten me this 
wealth; remember the Eternal thy God, for it is He who 
gives thee the power to acquire wealth.’’*. . 

“And the Lord God said to the congregation of the 
children of Israel, Be ye holy, for I the Lord your God 
am holy. ft” | 

Thus spiritual life and physical life are not separated 
in the doctrine of Judaism. Man lives in eternity, but 
not for eternity ; he is an element of eternal life; but so 
jong as he dwells on this earth, so long as he is linked 
to thevisible world, to the things of this world must he 
devote himself. Having a double nature, souland body, 
he is not. permitted to sacrifice the body to the ideal 
aspirations of the soul, any more than he is permitted to 





b Deuteronomy: viii. 17 and 18. + Leviticus xix. 2; xx. 
7 and 26. 


xxxiv INTRODUCTION. 


sacrifice the soul to the gross instincts of matter. His 
aim and his study ought to consist in combining the 
spirit and the flesh into a harmonious whole, in di- 
recting all the faculties, whether physical or moral, 
towards the divine idea, which is the good, the beau- 
tiful, and the true. And what is enjoined him as an 
individual is equally prescribed to him in a social point 
of view. Moses was the first who said, ‘“Man lives not 
by bread alone, but by every word which is uttered by 
the mouth of God.” * Communities also do not live by 
means of material interest only ; they hve by justice, by — 
right, by truth, which have their foundation in God, 
and which are a permanent revelation of the Deity. 
They live as much by spirit as by matter, and they have 
no right to sacrifice the one to the other of these indis- 
soluble elements of their existence and of their pro- 
gressive development. 

’ As is the individual man, so are communities created 
for this world; this world is their stage, their sphere 
of activity; they should devote themselves to the 
promotion of human progress —they are made for the 
living. Thence it follows necessarily that they can- 
not be guided by obscure theories of the immortality of 
the soul, of the rewards and punishments of a future 
life. No; they must be guided by positive laws, by 
human codes, by a material machinery which maintains 
order and unity in all the elements of the whole. Only, 
the principle of these laws is divine, their fundamental 
idea is divine ; for where can we find, save in God, those 
resplendent axioms of right and duty, on which the whole 
edifice of human society reposes ? 

Such is the doctrine of Judaism. The Hebrew legis- 
lator, while constituting a closely united people, did not 
lead them astray into the abstract regions of mysticism ; 
he was no dogmatiser on eternal life; he has imparted 


Ainentink 





* Deuteronomy viii. 3. 


INTRODUCTION. XXXV 


a powerful organization to the principles and agents of 
terrestrial life; he has established them on the most 
solid, the most moral, and the truest basis: on the idea 
of God. 

God is everywhere amid the Jewish people. He in- 
spires, He ordains the minutest laws; in His name is all 
done, is all decreed. But this perpetual intervention of 
the Divinity— and this is a remarkable circumstance—in 
no way limits the liberty of man in the domain of earthly 
things. God inspires and reveals what is right, but He 
does not impose it. He leaves to man the choice of evil, 
in order that He may have the glory of preferring the 
good. “Sin is lying at thy door,” exclaims the Divine 
voice to Cain, “but thou canst overcome it.’”’ Thus ac- 
cording to the Hebrew doctrine, providence and liberty 
have a continuous conformity ofaction. God has granted 
-to man the knowledge of good and of evil; He has re- 
vealed unto him the fundamental principles of truth ; He 
has bestowed on him powerful faculties, to be his guides 
here below, physical powers to resist the action of material 
evil, intellectual powers to resist the action of moral evil. 
It is the task of the human being to employ the elements 
of which he is composed with discernment, combined 
with the full exercise of his free will, 


VI. 


IT will be easily understood that these broad and liberal 
doctrines, alike moral, religious and social, must have 
been the principle of truly universal ideas and virtues. 
In fact, no moralist, no legislator of ancient or modern 
times, has presented to us so lofty a conception, as 
the Bible, of love towards our fellow-men, respect for 
the rights of others, the sanctification of the family, the 
spirit. of toleration and of fraternity. From the very 
first pages of Genesis, the creation of one only man— 
the work of God—establishes and declares the unity of 
the human race, the equality of the sons of Adam, and 


XXXVi INTRODUCTION. 


their original brotherhood. At a later time, the passions, 
the interests, the vices, or the chances of journeying on 
the earth, separate in vain one ofthese primitive brothers 
from the other. The Sacred Volume will unceasingly 
remind them that they are all in an equal degree creat- 
‘ures of God, and children of the First Father. 

In this same Genesis, of which the narrative is so 
‘simple, so touching, and so sublime, the mysterious 
creation of woman proclaims the sanctity and indisso- 
lubility of marriage, while it constitutes family life, that 
is to say, society, of which it is the cradle and the type, 
as the necessary and natural condition of humanity. 
And, later still, what admirable consequences did the 
Jewish law derive from this original consanguinity, this 
primordial unity of the human race. ‘Love thy neigh- 
bour as thyself,” says Moses, thus raising the instinctive 
egotism of man, to the elevation of one of the greatest - 
of social duties. “Love thy neighbour as thyself ;” 
marvellous maxim! which comprehends at once the 
command to do unto others all the good that we desire 
to be done to. us, and a prohibition from’ doing unto 
others what we do not desire to be done unto us. 

Thence also are derived those precepts of benevolence 
and sympathy towards all the peoples ‘of the earth; 
those pious exhortations to receive the stranger as a 
brother, to love him, and to act towards him in all rela- 
tions of life as though he was one born among them. 
Thence those remarkable alleviations of all the barbarous 
practices of ancient society. While political considera- 
tions, the examination of which would here cause too 
long a digression, induced Moses to permit slavery, he 
mitigates its severity with the most touching solicitude. 
In the Hebrew legislation the slave is really only aserv- 
ant, and the slightest violence offered to him by his 
master suffices to liberate him. Long before the French 
law, the Pentateuch declared every foreign slave to have 
the full right of freedom the moment he touched the soil 


INTRODUCTION. | XXXVIii 


of the Land of promise; to steal a free person and sell 
him as a slave, was a crime to be punished by death. 
No Hebrew was allowed to be a slave, ‘For, saith tne 
Eternal, who delivered the sons of Jacob out of Egypt, 
out of the house of bondage, the children of Israel can 
serve no other save me the Lord.” 
VIL. 

HAVE these universal aspirations and doctrines remained 
shut up in the narrow limits of Judea? And have they 
had no influence on the development of human society, 
and on the progress of civilization? Far from it. The 
world which, during the last eighteen hundred years, 
has relentlessly persecuted the Jews, only lives, breathes, 
moves and progresses by the ideas, the principles, and 
the inspirations of Judaism.. Christianity was the form 
and the instrument by which ancient polytheistic society 
was subjected to the power of Jewish ideas. But Christ- 
ianity did not originate them, but drew them forth by 
handfuls from the treasury of Israel, and disseminated 
them among the nations, by becoming their more or less 
faithful interpreter. 

This is a truth which cannot be, too openly advanced. 
Christianity has nothing in respect to fundamental prin- 
ciples, which does not equally belong to Judaism, save 
and except the formula of the compromise which it so 
cleverly established between Monotheism and a plurality | 
of gods, between the absolute spiritualism of the Bible 
and pagan anthropomorphism. 

In fact, at its birth, Christianity, in presence of: strange 
nations, did not deny either its origin or its name. The 
apostles were proud of the name of Israelites, and boldly 
claimed it as their title of nobility. The disciples of 
Jesus introduced themselves to the Gentiles under the 
mantle of Israel, and pretended to be, equally with the 
Jews of Palestine, the sons of Abraham, and the inheritors 
ofthe promise. The Gospel, triumphing in the pagan 


XXXViil INTRODUCTION. 


world, was the summons of the Gentiles to Judaism, and 
was neither the sacrifice, nor the destruction of Judaism 
for the advantage of idolatry. This Judaism, it is true, 
separated itself from the ancient one in many respects, 
in order to facilitate the conversion of polytheists; but 
it has retained its denomination, and has-ever had in- 
scribed on its banner the glorious name of the God of 
Israel. 

And when Christianity, at a later period, abandoning 
Judea and Jerusalem for the Rome ofthe Czesars, became 
the conqueror over ancient society, and assumed the 
organisation and development which seemed unto it 
fit—when Christianity was no longer able to apply literally 
to the new religion the predictions of the prophets, the 
promises of the Holy Book, and the textual expressions 
of the Old Testament, it nevertheless preserved and 
combined them in its dogmatic phraseology, and was 
content to set them forth in symbols. 

Thus, though the throne of David, Jerusalem and the 
nationality of Israel, were ingulfed by the waves of 
Roman invasion, and have totally disappeared, the 
Christian Church maintains that they still exist, but 
transfigured, and raised to the dignity of a supernatural 
myth. The name of Israel has been symbolically given 
to the assembly of the faithful of the new creed; a 
heavenly Jerusalem has replaced, in the hopes of Chris- 
tians, the earthly Jerusalem, which, according to the 
Jewish faith, is yet to become the centre of the moral 
world, and the throne of David has become idealized 
in the universal empire of Christianity. But whether 
symbol or reality, it is not the less true that the whole 
world has existed, subject to the influence of those 
ideas and words of essentially Jewish origin. 

The entire domain of religion has in other ways been 
much influenced by Judaism. Christianity has made 
known to the world and everywhere taught those ad- 
mirable Psalms, which pagans converted to Chris- 


INTRODUCTION. xxxix 


tianity, daily recite in their churches as the chief 
elements of their devotions. With’the exception of the 
beautiful Lord’s Prayer, the entire Christian ritual is 
borrowed from the books of the Old Testament Zion 
and her songs ever resound amid the most imposing 
ceremonials of Catholicism; they closely connect modern 
times with the imperishable remembrance of the exodus 
from Egypt—/u exztu Israel de Egypto, domus Facob de 
populo barbaro (“When Israel went out of Egypt, the 
house of Jacob from a foreign people’). The names of 
the patriarchs, of Moses, of Aaron, and of the great 
Hebrew prophets, are everywhere cited amid the rites 
and the services of the Christian Church. 

{It is Judaism then, which lives and breathes under 
these strange forms; forms that notwithstanding their 
discordant elements, have not succeeded in quenching 
the Israelitish idea, which is always militant, always active, 
amid principles apparently calculated to annihilate it. 

Without Judaism, the Christian Church, the religious 
world erected on the ruins of Roman paganism, could 
not have maintained their existence until the present day. — 
It is to Judaism, to it alone, that they owe their splendour, 
their power, and their universal dominion. 

In the exclusive domains of morality and intelligence, 
he most decided progress of civilisation also results 
from Judaism. I shall demonstrate later; by irrefutable 
proofs, that all the moral doctrine that is most admired 
in the Gospel is quoted textually from the Pentateuch, 
or the Prophets, and that in this respect, the teachings 
of Jesus initiated nothing, invented nothing. Thus, all 
the morality which has raised modern legislation and 
modern society to so high a degree of civilization, 
emanates, ever since the triumph of Christianfty over 
Paganism, from the Decalogue and the Bible, corrobo- 
rated, interpreted, and propagated by the Gospel. 

“Love thy neighbour as thyself: Do not avenge ; Love 
thou the stranger, for he is thy brother; Do not unto 


xl _- INTRODUCTION, 


- 


others what you would not should be done unto you; 
‘Defend, help, and protect the orphan, the fatherless, and 
the widow’’—all these holy maxims of charity, of brother- 
hood and of love, with which, Since the Christian era, 
the writings of the moralists and sages as well as the 
codes of civilised nations abound—all these admirable 
precepts, I repeat, proceed from Judaism; and Chris- 
_tianity, which found them already proclaimed, had only 
to transmit them and teach them to the Pagans, who 
were surprised and charmed by a moral code to which 
‘they were not accustomed. | 

And what has not this glorious sacred literature, so 
different from all that the greatest geniuses of antiquity 
had dreamt, thought, or written, contributed to the 
elevation and expansion of human thought! All the in- 
tellectual movement of the Middle Ages and of modern 
- times has been vivified by the inspiring breath of the 
Biblical writers. The study and the popularisation of 
the Psalms of’ the royal bard,’ the powerful imagery 
employed by the prophets to express their indignation 
* and their hopes, have stamped with their profound im- 
press the literature of the whole world. 

The action of Judaism, or rather of the Bible, which 
expresses and epitomises Judaism, was not of less im- 
portance in civil society. The great social revolution of 
1789 proceeds directly, though amid numerous incidents 
and political formulas, from the immortal principles of - 
Sinai. It is easily to be understood that peoples, ac- 
customed to see moral progress by the light of Chris- 
tian doctrines only, have attributed to the Gospel the 
principles of this vast revolution. But what matters it? 
The equality of men before the law, at the bar of con- 
science and before God—the glorious victory of 1789, 
belongs to Judaism and to Judaism only, out of all 
antiquity. Modern societies are transformed under the 
empire of this re-conquered right; intolerance dis-appears, 
and humanity marches towards that general peace, that 


INTRODUCTION. xli 


universal harmony, that community of interest and of 
effort promised to the entire world by the voice of the 
Prophets. 

I might develop these truths, of which I now only 
sketch the principal elements; but time and space are 
alike wanting. Besides, what I have stated suffices to 
demonstrate that universal order in religion, in morality, 
in philosophy, in public law, is maintained and has pro- 
gressed, during the last eighteen centuries, by means of 
the influence of Jewish ideas only, clothed in a Christian 
vestment, but even in their new form always visible and 
active. 2 ; 


VIII, 


Now, is it not evident to every candid mind that society 
approximates day by day to the Jewish principle? 
Monotheism, taught to the Pagan world under the form 
of a Trinity, tends constantly, in modern forms of 
faith, to resume the primitive character by which it is 
defined in the Pentateuch. It has taken the world two 
thousand years to become familiar with this doctrine, 
for which it was not prepared at the period when it 
was taught it by the Christian apostles; but at the pre- 
sent time, its acceptance is becoming daily more com- 
plete. Philosophy powerfully testifies to this great truth. 
The absolute Unity of God is its faith and its torch. 
And while this great change is being wrought in the 
minds of thinkers, the various religious systems them- 
selves, while subjects of serious doubts, are divesting 
themselves more and more of the Roman paganism, to 
which, at the time of their birth, they were compelled 
to make concessions. 

Yes, all in the region of ideas and facts tends towards 
the sublime doctrine of the Unity of God. Science it- 
self brings its support to religion, by its progressive 
discoveries of the Unity of the Creator, in the unity of 
creation. Politics, in becoming tolerant and fraternal, 


xlii INTRODUCTION. 


contribute to this end also, by basing their laws and 
their actions on the glorious principle of the unity of 
the human race, whence results the equality of all men. 

Thus the Unitarian belief, a belief essentially and ex- 
clusively Jewish, treasured up in Judaism itself, amidst 
its dispersions with an unconquerable courage, at the 
cost of persecution and martyrdom, enters equally into 
the working of social institutions, as it is the motto of 
the philosophy of the nineteenth century, and the breath 
of life, animating civilization and urging it on towards 
its new destinies. 

Judaism and modern society, thus drawing nearer to 

each other in this their common doctrine, approach each 
other still more closely in their future hopes. What is 
the hope of Judaism? What is this mysterious expecta- 
tion, which has accompanied it from its origin, and 
which has enabled it to bear unflinchingly all the vicis- 
situdes of its terrestrial wanderings? 
_ Judaism believes in the advent of an epoch of uni- 
versal peace and harmony, in which all men shall anew 
admit their brotherhood—in which weapons of destruc- 
tion shall be turned into instruments of labour and of 
production—in which all human families shall be united 
in one common faith, in one and the same law, in the 
adoration of God the Only One—in which all shall have 
but one language and one heart. 

The Jews designate this period of concord and of love, 
as the advent of the Messiah; but whatever be the name 
or the form, the characteristics of that blessed epoch are 
such as have just been depicted; they are written in in- 
delible letters in the predictions of Moses, of the pro- 
phets and sages of Israel. Whether the Messianic mis- 
sion be entrusted to a man divinely commissioned and 
inspired—to a glorious monarch, who will govern the 
world by justice and truth—or whether it will consist in 
a contemporaneous existence of institutions, of which 
the aim is to be peace and union among all men, the 


INTRODUCTION. xliii 


Messiah is not the less the unfailing hope and consola- 
tion of Israel. 

Thus, what Judaism expects as a fulfilment of Biblical 
prophecy, is equally foreseen and expected by the peoples 
of modern times. What Israel terms a Messianic age the 
thinkers of our day call progress. But under these 
different denominations, it is really one and the same 
thing. Now this ancient Utopia of universal peace is 
no longer considered by serious minds as a dream of an 
excited imagination. Everywhere manners, laws, insti- 
tutions tendto fusion; and it is not without astonish- 
ment that, according to the Biblical prediction, ‘‘we see 
that the mountains shall be made low and the valleys 
shall be exalted, and the rough places shall be made a 
plain, to make a road for the Lord;” that is to say, 
the most sublime expression of justice, love and truth. 

And at the very time when I am writing these lines, 
a royal thinker, the exalted sovereign of the most glo- 
rious throne of the éarth, has just uttered the formula of 
contemporaneous policy; that great thought of general 
peace, which, from the earliest period of its history, 
has been the true end and aim of Israel’s mission. 
In fact, our modern civilization tends to an ideal of 
equality, toleration, liberty, harmony, which aré, ac- 
cording to the secular belief of Judaism, the essential 
attributes of the Messianic era. 

How strange it is that other religions, which proclaim 
that the Messianic-man, or God has already appeared, 
should still look forward to a second coming, which is 
to be the Messianic epoch! From the earliest times, 
Christian traditions have announced this second advent, 
which is to realise the prophetic promises. Another 
symptom, not less remarkable, is that Islamism, which 
feels itself gradually sinking into decadence, never-~ 
theless feels a vague presentiment, that the present 
century will not close without witnessing a great religious 
revolution. Throughout the entire domain of Mahom- 


xliv INTRODUCTION. 


medanism, the appearance of the mysterious M/ou/-saa 
(‘Lord of the hour’’)is looked for as near at hand. 

What phiosophers foresee, what Christians expect, 
and what Mussulmans announce, viz., Progress, or the 
second ‘advent of the “Lord of the hour,” is nothing 
but the embodiment of the faith that illumines Israel, 
promising the universal triumph of Monotheism, on that 
day, when, throughout the earth “God shall be One, and 
His name One.” 

And when it shall be universally acknowledged that 
God is One. 

That He isa pure Spirit. 

That He is invisible and immaterial. 

That He acts in the created world, and that this world 
is His domain. 

That any homage paid to sensible objects is a desecra- 
tion of the idea of a Spiritual God. 

And when the day shall come on which these truths 
shall be confessed and accepted, the world will have 
grasped the very essence of Judaism, not as regards its 
local and temporary form, nor its ancient traditional 
worship, but as respects what is transcendently pure 
and sublime. 


vey 
~ . 
~ 

“ 

v 


THE DEICIDES. 





PART THE FIRST 


FIRST BOOK. 


State of Judea at the time of the birth of Jesus—Struggle 
against the Romans—Desire and hope for a Deliverer—Signs 
by which this Deliverer was to be recognised—Analysis of 
the Prophecies respecting the Messenger, and the Messianic 
Age. 


I, 


NEVER was a people better prepared to receive and to 
welcome a deliverer—never did a people feel more 
acutely the necessity of Divine help, than did the Jews 
of the period at which, according to the Gospel, Jesus 
Christ was born. The Hebrews had sustained a long 
and heroic conflict with the Roman empire. Seventy 
years before the birth of Jesus, and more than ninety 
before he began to preach, Jerusalem had been com- 
pelled at the close of an obstinate defence, to open her 
gates, to the triumphant legions of Pompey. This was 
the beginning of the great war, a war without precedent 
or example in the pages of history, a war destined to 
last throughout two centuries, amid perpetual revolts, 
numerous defeats, and marked by prodigies of valour 
and devotedness, and having for its motive the most 
generous of causes,—national independence and liberty 
of conscience, | | 


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At the moment of Jesus’s birth, Rome ruled Judea. 
The political institutions of the Hebrew people had 
succumbed to the laws of the conquerors, and to the 
centralizing organization of the Empire. The existence 
of the religious institutions was threatened by the intro- 
duction of heathen practices, either enforced by the 
proud rulers, or originated by ambitious apostates. The 
resistance of the Jews deepened and strengthened with 
their misfortunes, for they defended at once their 
country and their God. But they felt with desperation 
that, notwithstanding their courage and their constancy, 
they must eventually yield, sooner or later, to the united 
forces of the gigantic Empire of the Czsars. Nearly 
two hundred years previously, they had broken the 
‘Macedonian yoke by the glorious sword of the Macca- 
bees; but the Asmonean race was no more. Besides, 
Rome by its union, and by means of the heroism of its 
legions, was far more formidable than the Empire of 
Alexander, divided and torn as it was, after his death, 
into a thousand pieces by his rapacious generals. Greece 
was a state in its decline; the Roman Empire was in 
all its vigour. The struggle between Jerusalem and 
Rome might be indefinitely prolonged, but the issue was 
not doubtful. 

Under these circumstances, any liberator was sure to 
be received with enthusiasm. Whoever might come in 
the name of God, to fulfil the promises of the prophets, 
to re-establish the throne of David, and to repulse with 
victorious arms the invaders of the soil and of the city of 
the Lord, could not fail to excite general transports of 
delight, and to rally around him all the men and all the 
forces of Israel. The national and religious sentiments 
must infallibly concur in doubling the power of the 
Messiah and in ensuring the triumph of his mission. 

Chiefs, magistrates, doctors, the masses of the popu- 
lace, all were united in this respect, in one general im- 
pulse of patriotism and liberty. Judea was divided 


THE DEICIDES, ok 


into.numerous parties, but all these had but one aim, 
the defence of the laws, of the religion, and of the 
sacred soil; and for this end, some desired to shake off 
the Roman yoke by force and to kindle everywhere a 
holy war; while others counselled prudence and diplo- 
macy; these politicians, those openly revolutionary. 
Those powerful Pharisees, of whom the gospel traces so’ 
unfaithful a portrait, were generally partisans of open 
and desperate resistance ; to it they urged on the people, 
excited their passions against the Roman Sone 

and preached daily a war of independence. 

Never, I repeat, did hearts beat better prepared, or 
more favourably disposed, to welcome him so fréquently 
announced by the prophets, who, rekindling the quenched 
torch of David, was to break the yoke of the oppressor, 
to make Jerusalem the Centre of the world, to reconduct 
all peoples to the Unity of God, and to re-establish over 
the whole earth, love, peace, and brotherhood. 

Who, then, in Israel, at this moment of trouble and 
desolation, would have refused his acquiescence in this 
national and religious resurrection, in this work of 
universal regeneration? Who would have desired to 
place an obstacle in the way of the triumph of the 
Jewish idea and of the realization of those hopes, which 
had for several previous centuries supported, strength- 
ened, and enlightened the chosen ‘people, and had | 
prognosticated to them a glorious future amid all the 
families of the earth? Thus the hour was favourable, 
so favourable, that according to Josephus, a number of 
vulgar, ambitious, and clever impostors had profited by 
it, and that a considerable crowd of pseudo-messiahs 
and false prophets had arisen during this period. If 
clever intriguers could so mislead the people, by falsely 
declaring themselves messengers of the Eternal, how 
irresistible would have been the power of the real 
Messiah, when he at length should appear. The whole 
of Judea would infallibly have gathered around him, 


4 THE DEICIDES. Se 


ready to applaud him, ready to raise him to the throne, 
ready to obey his voice. 

Now, ifthis ardently desired liberty proceeded not from 
a mere man, but from God Himself, if that Providence 
which had never ceased to watch over the destinies of 
Israel, but deigned to intervene, in order to free the 
Hebrews from Roman despotism, as it had long before 
delivered them from Egypt and from the captivity of 
Babylon, why should the Jewish people, ever so easy to_ 
be convinced and influenced, have voluntarily closed 
their eyes to this miraculous manifestation, and have 
refused to adore the heavenly arm about to strike their 
enemies and to deliver Jerusalem? No! the Jews had 
no reason to reject the glorious destinies appointed to 
them, directly or indirectly, by their God; they had no 
reason not to recognize the Messiah, the son of David, 
as soon as he revealed himself; no reason, in a word, to 
resist the evidences of a fact which, when verified and 
accomplished, would, besides working their national 
liberation, invest them with the material and spiritual 
government of the whole world 


Il. 


Wuy then, did they not see this Redeemer in Jesus 
Christ ? 

The Gospel will give us the answer, the Gospel, the 
sole documentary evidence remaining to us, testifying 
to the life, the words, and the acts of the son of Mary; 
for the silence observed by contemporary writers res- 
pecting this dramatic episode of Jewish history, clearly 
indicates that Jesus was confounded with the crowd of 
false Messiahs of which this period was so prolific, and 
produced, at first, no deeper impression and left no 
more visible traces of his passage, than did the other 
pretenders. 

Thus, it is evident from the Gospel narrative, that 
Jesus did nothing, and desired to ao nothing by which 


THE DEICIDES. 5 


the Jews should recognize him ; and that he never ceased 
to deny them the proofs which they asked of him with 
painful anxiety. The proofs demanded by the Hebrew 
people resulted from uniform prediction and numberless 
prophecies. 

We do not pass judgment on these traditions and 
these prophecies as a philosopher, but as a historian; 
our aim is not, either to determine their character, or 
their authenticity, or to examine the strictures to which 
they have been subjected, under the influence of many 
passions and of various systems. We seek simply to 
verify the mental condition of Judea, at the period 
when Jesus lived there. Weexamine the popular beliefs 
of this epoch, in order better to understand the position 
assumed by the Jews towards him, who announced him- 
self to them first, as the Messiah, and soon after, as God. 
What then, are to be the signs, according to the belief 
of the Hebrew people, attending the Messianic age?* 
Among the supernatural events foretold, the Messiah 
predicted by the sacred writings was to be preceded by 
Elijah, the most popular and the most revered of the 
prophets among the Jews. ‘‘Behold, I will send you 
Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and 
dreadful day of the Lord.’’f 

The revelation of the new liberator was to be effected 
by means of one of those striking miracles which that 
God who manifested Himself of old amid the thunders 
of Sinai, who had sanctified Moses in the sight of all the 
people, had employed on every occasion in which the 
salvation of Israel was concerned.{ 

According to the natural order of events, the Messiah 
was to be a descendant of David and was to raise the 
throne of the prophet-king in Israel. He was to free 
the people of God from the foreign yoke, reunite the 





* Malachi iii. and iv. passim. ¢ Malachi iv. 
¢ Zechariah ii., xii. and xiv. 
Ez 


6 THE DEICIDES. 


dispersed children of the chosen race, and attract all 
the nations of the earth to the dogma of the Unity, to 
change murderous weapons into implements of labour, 
and to inaugurate the reign of universal peace. 

The Bible presents the most graphic picture of this 
period of fraternity and love. “when the wolf shall lie 
down with the lamb, and the leopard with the young 
kid, when all men shall have a heart of flesh, instead of 
one of stone, when all peoples shall have one tongue, 
shall adore the same God, and when Jerusalem shall be 
the sanctuary of all the nations of the earth.” 

“J have found David my servant; and with my holy 
oil have I anointed him, and with him my hand shall be 
established ; mine arm also shall strengthen him.’’* 

“And David my servant shall be king over them; and 
they all shall have one shepherd. . . . And they shall 
dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, 
wherein your fathers haye dwelt; and they shall dwell 
therein, even they, and their children, and their children’s 
children for ever: and my servant David shall be my 
servant for ever.’’t 

“But Judah shall dwell for ever, and Jerusalem from 
generation to generation.’ f 

“Thus saith the Lord of hosts It shall yet come to 
pass, that there shall come people, and the inhabitants 
of many cities: and the inhabitants of one city shall go 
to another, saying, Let us go speedily to pray before the 
Lord, to seek the Lord ofhosts . . . . Yea, many people 
and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of 
hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord. Thus 
saith the Lord of hosts: In those days it shall come to 
pass, that ten men out of all languages of the nations 
shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, 
We will go with you, for we know that God is with you.’’$ 





* Ps, Ixxxix. 20, 21. + Ezekiel xxxvii. 24. 
t Joel iii. 20. § Zechariah viii, 20, 


THE DEICIDES., 7 


“And it shall come to pass, in the latter days, that the 
mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the 
top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the 
hills, and all nations shall flow unto it, and many people 
shall go and say, Come ye and let us go up to the moun- 
tain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and 
He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His 
paths; for out of Zion shall the law go forth, and the 
word of the Lord from Jerusalem.’”* 

“In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David 
that is fallen, and I will close up the breaches thereof, 
and I will rebuild it, as in the days of old, that Israel 
may possess the remnant of Edom, and ofall the heathen 
who shall call upon my name, saith the Lord.’’t 

“Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of 

the Lord is revealed upon thee. And Gentiles shall 
come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy 
rising. Therefore thy gates shall be open continually, 
they shall not be shut day or night,.that the treasures 
of the Gentiles may enter, and their kings may be 
brought.” 
_ “Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, I shall 
make thee so that no man shall go through thee; I will 
make thee an eternal intelligence, a joy of all genera- 
tions.’’f 

“Behold the day is come, saith the Lord, that I will 
perform that good thing which I have promised to the 
house of Israel, and to the house of Judah. In those 
days, and at that time, will I cause the branch of right- 
eousness to grow up unto David, and he shall execute 
justice and righteousness in the land.’’§ 

“In that day, Jerusalem shall be called the House of 
Prayer for all nations.” | 





* Isaiah xi.; Micah iv. + Amos ix. 9. 


t¢ Isaiah lx, § Jeremiah xxxiii. 14. 15. 
|| Isaiah lvi. 7. — 


8 THE DEICIDES. 


“And the Lord shall be King over all the earth; and 
in that day the Lord shall be One, and His name One.” 

“And he-.shall judge among the nations, and shal! 
rebuke many people, and they shall beat their swords 
into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; 
nation shall not lift up the sword against nation, neither 
shall they learn war any more.” 

“They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy 
mountain ; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of 
the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” 

“The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the 
lion shall eat straw like the ox, they shall not hurt nor 
destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord.’’t 

Such were the principal prophecies which, long previ- 
ously, had announced the advent of the Messianic age to 
Israel and had characterized that epoch for which the 

_ Jewish people sighed amidst their misfortunes and their 
many Captivities. From these prophecies, it is manifest 
that from the day on which this liberator should appear, 
all nations were to form but asingle people, and that this 
people was to be Israel ; t that there was thenceforth to 
be but one holy city, the centre of the world, the mis- 
tress of other cities, and that one was to be Jerusalem: 
one holy law was to govern the whole human race, the 
law of Moses; finally, all men were to worship but one 
only God, a Unity in His essence and His name, Jehovah, 
the God of the Hebrews. Brotherhood, union and uni- 
versal peace were to be the indications and the results of 
‘the advent of the King, Messiah, when, seated on the 
throne of David, He would rule with justice over all 
united peoples. 





* Zechariah xiv. 9. + Isaiah xi. 6 and g; Ixv. 25. 

¢ This is proved to demonstration, by the passages in Isaiah 
and Ezekiel, which declare that on the day of triumph “the 
doors of Jerusalem shall no more be opened unto the uncir- 
cumcised, or the unclean.”—Isaiah x. 11 ; Ezekiel xliv. 9. 


THE DEICIDES. | 9 


It is useless to investigate here, as did the apostles and 
the fathers of the Christian church long after the teach- 
ings of Jesus, whether the words of the prophets had an 
entirely symbolical meaning, and were applicable to a 
wholly differént order ofideas from that which they really 
set forth; it is useless to examine whether ‘“ Jerusalem” 
signified a mystical city rather than the capital of Judea; 
if by the throne of David was to be understood the spiri- 
tual domination of the church; if the descendant of the 
Iiebrew king was to be of his posterity in the flesh, or 
in the spirit, etc., etc. It is incontestable that all the 
Messianic predictions were accepted and interpreted by 
the Jews, contemporaries of Jesus, according to their 
_ natural and material sense; Jerusalem itself, freed from 
its foreign masters, was to become the centre and the 
metropolis of the world. By human agency, and by ma- 
terial means, were the restoration of the kingdom of 
David and the legitimate descent of his son to be accom- 
plished and confirmed. It suffices for us, in our duty as 
historian, that whether the result ofreason, or blindness, 
such was the general mental condition of Judea. Every 
page of the Gospel, as it were, demonstrates this truth. 

We have been compelled to restrict ourselves to the 
consideration of the general characteristics only of the 
messianic. herald and the messianic epoch. All ac- 
companying data which the Christian system has added, 
do not exist in the sacred text, or are extracted from 
passages for the most part devoid of messianic ideas, and 
manifestly perverted from their true signification. It is 
difficult, even with the best will in the world, to dis- 
cover in the writings of the Hebrew prophets the 
announcement of the divinity of Christ the redeemer; we 
siould seek in vain in their pages for any clear predic- 
tion of his receiving life from a virgin, of his passion 
and his death for the moral purification of all the 
human race and for the wiping out of original sin, of his 
resurrection, and, above all, his consubstantiation, to- 


10 THE DEICIDES. 


gether with the holy Ghost, and with the One only 
invisible and infinite God. If the fathers of the Chris- 
tian church, by means of excessive symbolism, could 
perceive these mysteries to be indicated in the prophetic 
books, in which, however, their expression is wholly im- 
perceptible, it is certain that they were accepted by no 
one in Judea, that they resulted from no anterior tradi- 
tion, and that they derived no support, either from the 
doctors of the Synagogue, or from popular belief. 

Let us now examine in how far the predictions which 
we have cited were fulfilled in Jesus, and in how far he 
proved his divinity, or, at least, his messianic mission to 
that Hebrew people, whose every wish was directed to 
the advent of Christ, the Saviour. 


THE DEICIDES., II 


SECOND BOOK. 


John the Baptist—Was he the Predicted Forerunner ?—His 
Replies to his questioners—His doubts as to the mission of 
Jesus—Scene of the Transfiguration—Miraculous conception 
of Jesus—The Annunciation—Joseph’s dream—The people’s 
ignorance — Birth of Jesus— Accompanying Miracle—The 
Magi—Massacre of the Innocents—Good Faith of the Jews— 
Jesus was not the son of David—Jesus and Emanuel, 


i. 


WE have seen, that according to the unanimous belief of 
the Synagogue, the Messiah was to be preceded by the 
miraculous appearance of the prophet Elijah.* 

The Gospel also proclaims a forerunner of Jesus, 
John the Baptist, preaching in the desert,t and declaring 





* In fact, this is admitted by the Evangelists :—“Et interro- 
gaverunt eum discipuli dicentes: Quid ergo scribae dicunt 
quod Elias oporteat primum venire? At ille respondens ait eis: 
Elias quidem venturus est et restituet omnia.” The Gospel 
according to St. Matthew xvii. Io-II. 

+ The episode of John the Baptist at once shows the erroneous 
exegesis adopted by the Evangelists, and the alterations. to 
which they subjected the Biblical text, in order to make it 
correspond with the events of the life of Jesus :—‘“For this 
was He that was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying, “The 
voice of One crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the 
Lord,’” etc. (Matthew iii.). Here, then, is a considerable error 
in translation; the text really says: “The voice of Him that 
crieth in the wilderness, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord ; make 
straight in the desert a highway for our God,’” Isaiah xl. 3. 
The connection of the two portions of the verse clearly indi- 
cates the true signification, 


12 THE DEICIDES. 


. that the kingdom of Heaven was near, and who, baptiz- 
ing in the waters of Jordan, announced, that “he who 
was to come after him, would be much greater than he, 
and would baptize with the holy Ghost and with fire.” * 

The people hurriedly crowded around this fiery preacher 
of the wilderness, who clothed in the skin of goats, and 
a leathern girdle around his waist, fed.only on locusts 
and wild honey. 

‘ Anxious to discover all the signs of approaching 
deliverance, the Jews were disposed to see in him the 
herald of whom the prophets spoke. 

When at a later period, the editors of the Gospel 
sought to invest the mission of Jesus with a prophetic 
basis, they unhesitatingly declared John the Baptist to 
be Elijah, arisen from the dead. They affirmed that in 
him the prophecy of Malachi was fulfilled. In the 
Synoptic, is also found as attributed to Jesus, an explicit 
declaration on this very essential point of contempo- 
raneous popular belief— 

“Verily I say unto you, among them that are born of 
women, there hath not risen a greater than John the 
Baptist, and if ye will receive it, this is Elias which was 
forto come. Jpse est Elias gui venturus est.” | 

But John the Baptist was far from accepting the part 
ascribed to him; in fact, on the rumour of his preaching, 
the Jews of Jerusalem caused him to be interrogated. 
- Who art thou? askedthose sent. Art thou the Messiah? 

John replies and confesses that he is not the Christ. 
And they ask him: What then? Art thou Elias? And he 
saith: lamnot. Artthouthat prophet? And he answers, 
No. Then say they unto him: Who art thou? that we 
may give an answer unto them that sent us. He saith: 
I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make’ 
straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias, 





* “And saying, Repent ye, for the kingdom of Heaven is at 
hand.” Matthew iii. 2, 3, etc.; Matthew xi. 14. 


THE DEICIDES. 13 


And they which were sent, were of the Pharisees, and 
they asked him and said unto him: Why baptizest thou 
then if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, nor that pro- 
phet? And John answered them, saying: I baptize with 
water, but there standeth one among you whom ye know not ; 
this is he of whom I said, “After me cometh a man which 
is preferred before me; for he was before me.’’* 

This curious official report of the examination of John 
the Baptist occurs in the Gospel of St. John, and we see 
that the former emphatically denied his title of herald. 
How was it possible then, that in face of these declara- 
tions, the people, pontiffs, and priests could recognize in 
him the prophet Elijah, who was to precede the Messiah? 

Besides, this John the Baptist, who, according to all 
the Evangelists, proclaimed the divinity and the mission 
of Jesus, was apparently himself not free from doubts on 
this head. Imprisoned by the order of Herod, he heard 
of the miracles already performed by the son of Mary, 
and he sent two of his disciples asking him: Art thou 
he that should come, or should we look for another? t 
Thus John denied his own mission, and doubted -that of . 
Jesus. Could the Hebrews evince more credulity than 
he did himself? 

Moreover, the doubts and contradictions pervading 


the Gospel narrations are a strange feature ofallrelating — 


to this forerunner. 

Though he made so uncompromising a declaration in 
the passage just quoted respecting the character and the 
mission of John the Baptist, Jesus is much less positive 
on another occasion. 3 

“ Elijah is already come,” said he one day to his dis- 
ciples, “and if ye will receive it, this is Elias which was to 
come.” { How is this zzcognzto of the expected prophet 
to be reconciled with the previous declaration that Elijah 





* St. John i. 19-27. + Matthew ii. 1, 2, 3. 
) + Matthew xi. 14. 


14 THE DEICIDES. 


and John were one and the same. Besides, the ignoranee 
of John the Baptist respecting his own prophetic char- 
acter, renders the scepticism of the Jews, a circumstance 
of no moment, since when interrogating the pretended 
prophet, they received from his own mouth such direct 
denials. 


But there is yet more to be said. Every one is fami- 
liar with the scene of the transfiguration, in which Jesus, 
accompanied only by Peter, James, and John, conducts 
them to the summit of a high mountain, where they sud- 
denly behold him, his countenance luminous as the sun, 
his. person enveloped in a garment as white as snow, in 
converse with Moses and the prophet Elijah! 


This scene was manifestly set forth with the sole ob- 
ject of imparting a new historical basis to the mission of 
Jesus ; but whatever may have been the intention of the 
framers of this supernatural narrative, if according to it 
we believe Elijah appeared then forthe first time, how can 
we admit that he had previously revealed himself under 
the semblance of John the Baptist? ° 


Yet fora people so prone to credit the marvellous as 
were the Hebrews, the knowledge of this splendid trans- 
figuration, verified by the presence of Moses and Elijah, 
would surely have been of a character to put an end to 
all hesitation; the most incredulous prostrating them- 
selves with their faces to the earth, would unanimously 
have acknowledged him to be the Christ. Having 
Peter’s natural caution, they would have desired, as he 
did, to erect three tabernacles on this sacred mount, one 
to Jesus, one to Moses, and one to Elijah the Prophet. 


But the Master of the Evangelists, not only selected 
but three of his disciples to be witnesses of this revela- 
tion, he also forbade them to tell the vision to any man 
till after his death. ‘And as they came down from the 
mountain, Jesus charged them, saying: ‘Tell the vision 


THE DEICIDES. 15 


to no man, until the son of man be risen again from the 
dead.’ ’’* 

Thus the Jews, notwithstanding all their honest in- 
- quiries, could not confirm the truth of the alleged advent 
of the forerunner prophet. They were not aware of the 
miraculous transfiguration on Mount Thabor; they were 
wholly ignorant of the appearance of Elijah and Moses, , 
and hence in the history of Jesus, and in his intercourse 
with the people and the chiefs of Israel, the very first 
essential condition was wanting, which was to indicafe 
the inauguration of the messianic epoch. 

Let us now see whether the Christ revealed himself 
more Clearly than Elijah the prophet had done. 


II. 


All the miraculous circumstances which are connected 
with the birth of Jesus Christ constitute the most le- 
gendary portion of the life of the great Reformer. We 
find these legends especially mentioned in the Gospel 
according to St. Luke, which may be termed the Gospel 
of fables. Matthew and Mark are much more reserved 
with respect to marvellous narrations, They state that 
Joseph received the revelation of the Divine nature of 
the son of whom Mary was about to become the mother, 
merely in a dream, and not by supernatural appearances, 
or by the apparition of angels. Criticism cannot hesitate 
which to choose, whether their narrative, or that of 
Luke. According to Matthew and Mark, the birth of 
Jesus was unaccompanied by any public revelation of 
his divinity; the Hebrew people knew not that the 
Messiah was about to appear, that God was to be incar- 
nated, was to be born, to live, to suffer, and to die for 
the salvation of the whole human race. Matthew and 
Mark, writing more nearly contemporaneously with Jesus, 
well understood how difficult it would be to induce the 





* Matthew xvii. 9. 


16 THE DEICIDES., 


witnesses of his life, to admit the historical truth of 
pretended miracles, which had not been produced by 
any visible phenomenon. Luke was less cautious; he 
imparted extraordinary development to the legendary 
passages of Christ’s biography. The method which we 
have adopted obliges us to set forth this mythical por- 
tion, and to examine whether, even had they accepted it, 
the Jews of that period could have become convinced of 
the truth of the Christian dogma by the supernatural 
occurrences which it connects with the birth of Jesus. 
These mysteries, which perplex the senses, and sur- 
pass human intelligence, are too suggestive of mytholo- 
gical records, not to owe their rise to the period when 
early Christianity approached the heathen world. Let 
us, however, examine them in the literal text only. 
According to the Gospels, then, God disdained not to 
render a simple mortal a mother, and the Holy Ghost to 
impregnate a virgin, the blessed among women. St. 
Luke says, that the angel Gabriel was sent by God tothe 
the virgin Mary, then the betrothed of an inhabitant of 
Nazareth, called Joseph; he announced to her that a son 
would be born unto her by the interposition ofthe Holy 
Ghost, and by virtue of the Most High, and that this son, 
holy among the holiest, would be called the Sox of God. 
-The Eternal would bestow on him the sceptre of David, 
and perpetual dominion over the house of Jacob. Mary . 
resigned, replied to this mysterious prediction: “I am 
the servantof the Lord; let Him do with me according 
to His will.” And the heavenly messenger departed.* 





* “And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from 
God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth. To a virgin es- 
poused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of 
David ; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came 
in unto her, and said, Hail! ¢hou that art highly favoured, the 
Lord zs with thee : blessed ar/ thou among women! And when 
she saw im, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her 


THE DEICIDES. | 17 


But this divine annunciation, thus miraculously made to 
the chosen Virgin, was concealed by her within the most 
secret recesses of her soul. No one knew it, not even 
her husband. In fact, it is related in the Gospelaccord- . 
ing to St. Mathew, that Joseph having discovered the 
condition of his wife before their union, and not wishing 
_ to bring her before the tribunal, resolved merely to send 
her back to her parents. If Mary had informed him of 
the Hivine message she had received, he could not have 
formed a resolution, which notwithstanding the tender- 
ness of his sentiments, would nevertheless have been a 
discreditable infliction for his young wife. Happily, 
while pondering over this intention, he had a dream, in 
which an angel said to him, ‘‘ Fear thou not, Joseph, to 
receive Mary as thy wife, for the child which she bears, 
is of the Holy Ghost.” And Joseph awoke henceforth 
convinced, and did according to the word of the Lord.* 





mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel 
said unto her, Fear not, Mary; for thou hast found favour with 
God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring 
forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, 
and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord shall 
give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall 
reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom 
there shall be noend. Then said Mary unto the angel, How 
shall this be, seeing I know not aman? And the angel answered 
and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and 
the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also 
that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the 
Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she has also 
conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month 
with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall 
be impossible. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the 
Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel 
departed from her.” Luke i. 28 and 29. 
* Matthew i. 19, 20-23. 


18 THE DEICIDES. 


But he did not reveal these extraordinary circumstances, 
any more than Mary had done. No oneamong the Jews 
was aware ofthis miraculous conception. In fact, when 
the son of Mary, having reached the age of manhood, 
began his discourses, the Jews who heard and admired 
him, the people ofhis own district were constantly ex- 
claiming, ‘‘ Whence has he derived this wisdom? Ishe . 
not the son of the carpenter? Is not his mother’s name 
Mary? And are not his brothers named James, Joseph, 
Simon and Jude ?’* Now, if the people of Galilee had 
been acquainted with the legends concerning his birth, 
how could they have felt surprised at these wonderful 

,qualities and this intellectual power in the son of God? 


III. 


THE physical birth of Jesus was unmarked in the sight 
of the general public, by any more solemnity and splen- 
dour than the conception of him had been. Joseph, 
leaving Nazareth, went to Bethlehem accompanied by his 
wife, in order to have his name registered, in obedience 
to an edict proclaimed by Czsar for the numbering of 
the population. On her arrival in that town, Mary felt 
her delivery approaching, and she gave birth to a child, 
which she had to place in a manger, because none ofthe 
hostelries could afford her accommodation. Nothing 
happened to announce to the inhabitants and population 
of Bethlehem and Judea that a Messiah had just been 
born,t | 

Certain Evangelists, contemporaries ofthe birth ofJesus, 
record two miraculous events. At the moment of his 
divine birth, to some shepherds who were passing the 
night in the field, there suddenly appeared an angel of , 
the Lord, and they were surrounded by a divine light. 





* Matthew xiii. 54, 55. 
+ The fact of the registering is far from being proved; but 
this does not affect the narrative. 


THE DEICIDES. 19 


“ And the angel said unto them, Fear nought, for behold 
I bring you good tidings, of great joy, which shall be 
unto all people; for unto you is born this day in the city 
of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this 
shall be a sign unto you; ye shall find the babe wrapped 
in swaddling cloths lying in a manger.” ‘And sudden- 
ly,” adds the Evangelist St. Luke, who alone speaks of 
this vision, *‘ And suddenly there was with the angel a 
multitude of the Heavenly Host, praising God and saying 
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and. 
good will toward men.’’* 

This divine light, these angels and heavenly host pro- 
claiming the advent of Christ the Saviour, and singing 
the praises of God and the greatness of the young Mes- 
siah, formed a resplendent revelation, according with the 
ancient traditions and the simple faith of Israel. But 
this revelation, granted as a particular favour to obscure 
shepherds, was refused to the masses of the Hebrew 
people. No one at Bethlehem besides these country 
shepherds, was witness of this divine revelation, of which 
Luke alone, always carried away by his legendary system, 
has preserved the narrative. 

The second fact is related in St. Matthew; it is the ar- 
rival of the Eastern Magi at Jerusalem. ‘“ Where is he 
that is born King of the Jews ?” say the wise men, ac- 
cording to this Evangelist, for we have seen his star in 
the East, and we have come to worship him.” These 
words having reached the ears of Herod made a deep 
impression on him, and with him on all the city. He 
called all the Priests and Scribes around him and asked 
them at what place the Christ was to be born. They 
reply, at Bethlehem. Then Herod summons the Magi 
around him and questions from them of the moment at 
which the revealing star appeared to them; then he sent 
to Bethlehem, saying thus unto them, “Go and search 





* Luke ii. 1-14. 


20 THE DEICIDES. 


diligently for the young child, and when ye have found 
him, bring me word again that .I may come and worship 
him also.”” The Magi retired, preceded by the star which, 
they had seen in the East, till it came and stood over 
where the divine child was, ‘“‘and when they were come 
into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his 
mother, and fell down and worshipped him: and when 
they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him 
gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.” 

But after this act of adoration, they did not return to 
Herod and publicly proclaim the birth of Christ, but de- 
parted into their own country by another way. *‘ Herod,” 
says the Evangelist, “when he saw he was mocked of the 
wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth and slew 
all the children in Bethlehem.’’* 

Contemporary history furnishes us with no trace, 
among the numerous acts of cruelty imputed to Herod, 
of this massacre of the innocents. But whatever may be 
thought on this subject, certain it is that the Jewish 
people saw not the light at the period of the journey of 
the Eastern Magi, any more than they beheld the appa- 
rition of the heavenly angels to the shepherds. This 
vision of the pastors took place in the middle ofthe night, 
without witnesses ; the Magi after having worshipped in 
Jesus Christ the King of the Jews, fled away without 
saying one word toanyone, and thus refused their solemn 
and public testimony in support of his divinity. How — 
then was it possible, that the Hebrews, at a later period, 
could believe in events of which they had not been wit- 
nesses, of which no proof was given them, and of which, 
according to the gospel narrative itself, from motives 
which it is not our province to investigate, the knowledge 
even was concealed from them ? 

Let us remark an additional circumstance relative to 
the birth of Jesus, which, according to the system of the 





* Matth. ii. 1-18. 


THE DEICIDES. 21 


Evangelists, was calculated to interfere w 4a the confir- 
mation and the success of his mission ia the midst of 
Israel. 

The Messiah was, according to all the pr.»phecies, to be 
a descendant of David; now the descent from Joseph 
was far from being clearly established in the opinion 
of the Hebrews. Nothing pertaining either to the car- 
penter of Nazareth, or to Mary, publicly indicated and 
‘ corroborated a royal origin; and the genealogies con- 
tained in the several gospels present too many important 
discrepancies amongst themselves, to render the admis- 
sion of their authenticity possible. 

But the question was decided by a fact rendered other- 
wise important. As soon as Jesus declared himself to be 
the son of God, as a divine verb, incarnate in a 
human body, as soon as his biographers asserted that 
he had been miraculously conceived by means of the 
Holy Ghost, even before the union of Mary and Joseph, 
the royal genealogy which had been more orless proved, 
became, it is manifest, a matter of entire insignifiance. 
In the eyes of the Jewish people, whoare represented by 
their adversaries, as being servilely attached to the letter 
of their traditions, Jesus could no longer be held to be 
a descendant of David, and to him the words of prophecy 
were no longer applicable. We shall see, indeed, that 
the Jews who received him most favorably as a prophet, 
at a later period violently opposed him, the moment he 
disturbed their belief in all their traditions and in the 
whole system of prophetic promises, by his assumption 
of the title of son of God, and by the assertion that he 
was God Himself. 

Thus, the Gospel relies less, in proof ofthe miraculous 
birth of Jesus, on the prediction ofhis descent from the 
house of David, than on other prophecies. After the 
narrative of the conception of the Son of God in the 
~ womb ofa virgin, and the annundiation of the birth of a . 
child who would be called Jesus, it adds :—“ Now all this 

F ; 


22 THE DEICIDES. 


was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of 
the Lord, by the prophet, saying, ‘ Behold, a virgin shall 
be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall 
call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God 
with us.’’’ Et vocabis nomen ejus Jesum. Hoc autem 
totum factum est ut adimpleretur quod dictum est a 
Domino per prophetam, dicentem :—Ecce virgo in utero 
habebit et pariet fillum et vocabunt nomen ejus Emman- 
uel.* 

It was difficult for the Jews, who are accused of being 
fanatic adorers of the letter, to consent, with the best 
will in the world, to recognise in him revealing himself 
under the name of Jesus, the deliverer announced by 
Isaiah, under the name of Emmanuel, though early Chris- 
tianity, by means of its mystic symbolism, succeeded 
later in discovering an analogy between these two names. 
Let us here state the fact, that it is not astonishing this 
analogy was not discovered by the material eyes and in- 
tellects of Jesus’s contemporaries. 





* Matt. i. 22 and 23. Let us here remark that the word moby 
employed by Isaiah in the passage quoted above, signifies 
‘young woman’, at least equally with ‘virgin’. The same word 
is found in the Canticle, clearly used to denote the women of 
Solomon’s harem. However, this passage of Isaiah, like so 
many others, has been strangely wrested from its real signifi- 
cation. The prophet who addresses the King Ahaz, adds that, 
_ Before the promised child Emmanuel shall know how to refuse 
the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest 
shall be forsaken of both her kings. And he went unto the 
prophetess, and she conceived, and bare a son, and before the 
child shall have knowledge to cry, “‘ ‘My father and my mother,’ 
the riches of Damascus, and the spoils of Samaria shall be 
taken away before the king of Assyria.” { Thus the prediction 
of the prophet referred, evidently, to an event, not of the Mes- 
sianic, but of a contemporary period. 

¢ Isaiah ix. 19. Isaiah viii. 3. 


THE DEICIDES. 23 


Thus, if we admit the authenticity of the Gospel nar- 
rative, it is yet indisputable that all the circumstances by 
which, at a time when the marvellous played so impor- 
tant a part, the divinity of Jesus at the moment of his 
appearance on earth, could have been demonstrated, 
must have been wholly unknown to the Jewish people. 
Can they, then, be blamed if, when later the mysteries of 
the incarnation and of virginal maternity were proclaimed 
to them, they refused to believe? 

We ask pardon of our readers for having so long dwelt 
on this manifestly legendary matter of the birth ofJesus. 
Christianity appeals to us against the scepticism of the 
Jews; its examination was therefore indispensable. 


ay 652! _ THE DEICIDES. 


THIRD BOOK. 


Childhood of Jesus—His brothers and sisters—Family life— 
The child Jesus at Jerusalem—Baptism of Jesus—Miracles 
of the time of Moses—First sermons of Jesus—The admira- 
tion that he excited—His respect for the law of Moses—His 
departure from Nazareth—The miracles of Jesus—Miracles 
in respect of faith and of science—Authority of miracles in 
Hebrew dogma—Legend of Rabbi Eliezer—Prophets and 
Thaumaturges—Jesus as prophet. 


om 


JESUS grew up. His childhood and youth passed with- 
out the attention of his contemporaries being attracted 
by anything marvellous or extraordinary; he was cir- 
cumcised on the eighth day after his birth; as firstborn 
he was redeemed; and at the expiration of thirty-three 
days, according to the laws of Moses, his mother fulfilled 
the ceremony of purification, and offered the peace offer 
ing prescribed by the sacred code, at the Temple of 
Jerusalem. Finally, after having observed all the ordin- 
ances of the Jewish law, Joseph and Mary returned to 
Nazareth in Galilee, where, says the Gospel, “the child 
grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and 
the grace of God was upon him.’”* 

Joseph and Mary had moreover, several other chil- 
dren, sons and daughters, who are referred to more 
than once in the Gospel, some of them being mentioned 
by their names—Joseph, Simon, and Jude. Jesus was 
brought up amidst his brothers and sisters, and this 
simple. and uneventful family-life, resembling that of the 





* Luke ii, 21—24. 


THE DEICIDES. 25 


most humble inhabitants of-Galilee, was evidently de- 
void in the eyes of those who witnessed it, of any idea 
of divinity. Who could suspect there dwelt an immacu- 
late Virgin, one remaining a virgin after childbirth, in 
the person of this beautiful and radiant mother, sur- 
rounded by her numerous progeny? Who, indeed, could 
possibly suspect the presence of the son of God himself, 
miraculously conceived and begotten, in that fair and 
graceful child, playing with his brothers, and learning 
from his pious-parents, respect for the Jewish law and 
for the first principles of religion, morality, and virtue.* 

Besides,-this cntire period of the life of Jesus is in- 
volved in complete obscurity, and this proves that it 
was not marked by any event of a nature to establish 
the divine character of his mission. One incident only 
of his youth, is related by his biographer. He wastwelve 
years of age, his father and mother had gone, according 
to custom, to Jerusalem, to celebrate the Passover; on 
their way back to Galilee. they perceived that Jesus was 
not with them, they uneasily retraced their steps, and 
after three days’ anxious search, they found him in the 
Temple, seated among the doctors, listening to them, 
and interrogating them with a wisdom that filled all 
present with admiration. ‘My son,” said his Mother, 
‘why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father 
and I have sought thee sorrowing.” And he said unto 
them, “How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that 
I must be about my Father’s business?” “But,” adds 
the Evangelists, ‘‘they understood not the saying which 
he spake unto them.”’{ Strange contradiction of the 





* Matt. xi, 46, and xiii: 55—56. Some assume these«were 
only cousins of Jesus, but the textisclear. It says, “Brothers,” 
Sratres, and leaves no room for doubt. 

¢ Luke ii, 41—50: Et ipsi non intellexerunt verbum quod lo- 
cutus est ad eos. 


26 THE DEICIDES. 


historian. For, after the angel’s revelation, received 
by Mary before her conception, and by Joseph during | 
sleep, the meaning of the words ought to have been 
perfectly clear to them. At all events, what they did 
not comprehend themselves, must have been yet more 
unintelligible to those present. They reconducted their ~ 
son to Nazareth, where, adds the Gospel, “he was sub- 
ject unto them, erat subditus zilis.”” Then nothing more 
is heard of Jesus or his family, until the time when the 
son of Mary, having attained to manhood, suddenly 
appeared before Jewish society, proclaimed his ideas of 
reform, and began the glowing orations which were des- 
tined, ere long, to lead to his condemnation and his 
death. 


II, 


The first act by which he manifested himself was his 
baptism. We have seen that John preached repentance 
and the remission of sin, on the banks of the Jordan, 
and that the people flocked to him in crowds, in order 
_to be baptised in the waters of the river. Jesus also 
wefit from Galilee to the Jordan, to receive baptism from 
the hands of John; but John forbade him, saying, “I 
have need to be baptised of thee, and comest thou to 
me?’ And Jesus answering, said unto him, “Suffer it 
to be so now, for thus it becometh us to fulfil] all righte- 
ousness.’’* John, convinced, performed the sacred rite 
and Jesus, baptised by the fiery preacher of the desert, 
went up straight away out of the water. 

. Suddenly, says the Gospel, ensued a striking revela- 
tion; “the Heavens were opened unto him, and he saw 
the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting 





* Matthew iii, 13—15. 


THE DEICIDES. 27 


upon him: and lo! a voice from heaven saying, ‘This is 
my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.’”’ * — 

How then was it possible that the immense crowd 
that thronged the banks of the Jordan could have re- 
mained unmoved in the presence of this startling pheno- 
menon? Here was almost a repetition of the sublime 
scene of Sinai, the skies opening, the divine voice re- 
sounding through space. Nothing could have prevented 
the people, who believed so unanimously in the revela- 
tion of Mount Horeb, from once more yielding to the 
evidence of their senses, and immediately prostrating 
themselves at the feet of him whom God himself had 
proclaimed to be “His well-beloved Son.” 

The cause of this indifference is simply this; the pre- 
tended miracle, according to the Gospel itself, was not 
visible to the Hebrews; not one among the numerous 
witnesses of the baptism of Jesus, saw either the skies 
open, or the divine Spirit descend, under the form of a 
dove; nor did one person hear the divine voice, caus- 
ing measureless space to tremble. To Jesus alone was 
this miracle revealed ; his eyes only were permitted to 
behold these heavenly phenomena. The Gospel narra- 
tive admits not of a doubt on this point. ‘ Jesus came 
out of the water,” said St. Matthew, ‘‘and the Heavens 
were opened to HIM, and HE saw the Spirit of God des- 
cending upon HIM, and lighting upon HIM in the sem- 
blance of a dove.’’* 

The manner in which St. John relates the same fact. 
further lessens the importance of this vision. According 
to this Evangelist, it was not Jesus who saw the skies 
open and the Spirit descend under the form of a dove. 
It was John the Baptist, to whom these revealing signs 





* Confestim ascendit de aqua, et ecce aperti sunt ¢z cceli, et 
viait Spiritum Dei descendentem sicut columbam et venientem 
super se-—Matthew iii, 16, 17. 


sae THE DEICIDES. 


were vouchsafed. John, says he, bore testimony in these 
terms :—“I saw the Spirit descending from Heaven like 
a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not: 
but he that sent me to baptise with water, the same 
said unto me, ‘Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit 
descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which 
baptiseth with the Holy Ghost.’ And I saw and bare 
record that this is the Son of God.’’* 

Whichever of these two versions be adopted, it remains 
none the less clearly proved, that the divine manifesta- 
tion occurred solely, either for John the Baptist, or for 
Jesus, even if its reality is fully admitted, instead of its 
being imputed to the symbolism of some inward revela- 
tion. The people who had gathered in crowds on the 
banks of the Jordan, had neither any knowledge, nor 
any suspicion of the occurrence. 

John the Baptist himself appears to have attached little 
importance to this pretended revelation ; for, as we have 
seen, long after the incident of the baptism, and when in 
his dungeon, he expressed the most significant doubts 
and caused Jesus to be interrogated as to whether he 
was really the Christ, or whether another was to be ex- 
pected. 

From the earliest days of their history, the Hebrew 
people had not been accustomed to this mystery, this 
divine incognito. Even before the occurrence of the 
celestial miracles, which were regarded by them as 





* Et testimonium pertribuit Joannes, dicens: ‘“ Quia vidi 
Spiritum descendentem quasi columbam de ccelo et mansit 
supereum. Et ego nescicham eum; sed qui misit me baptizare 
in aqua ille mihi dixit:—‘ Super quem videris Spiritum sanc- 
tum descendentem et manentem super eum, hic est qui bap- 
tizat in Spiritu sancto.’ Et ego vidi et testimonium pertribui 
quia hic est Filius Dei.’—John i. 32—34. 


THE DEICIDES. 29 


striking evidences of the intervention of the Almighty, 
they were warned of their imminence and of their super- 
natural significance. ‘Fear ye not,” said Moses to.the 
people on the shores of the Red Sea, “ for the Egyptians 
whom ye have seen to-day, ye shall see them again no 
more for ever. And a moment after the waters returned 
and overwhelmed the Egyptians amid their raging bil- 
lows.’’* “Sanctify yourselves,” spoke the great legisla- 
tor of Israel, with deep emotion, + to the people assem- 
bled at the foot of the flashing mountain of Sinai, ‘‘ Sanc- 
tify yourselves, purify yourselves, body and soul, for in 
three days ye will hear the voice of the Eternal God 
proclaiming His everlasting truths unto the earth.” 
“ And it came to pass on the third day, that Mount Sinai 
was altogether on a smoke,” and amid the conflict of 
the elements Israel heard the resounding voice pro- 
claim the immortal code of the future, the indestructible 
law of humanity, the DECALOGUE. And when after- 
wards, Moses exhorted the chosen people perpetuallyto - 
observe these sacred laws, he could say without fear of 
contradiction, “These words the Lord spake unto all 
your assembly, in the Mount out of the midst of the fire, 
of the cloud, and of the darkness, with a great voice, 
and he added no more.”{ ‘Your eyes have seen, your 
ears have heard, all that the Lord hath done for you, 
from your departure out of Egypt until now.’’§ 

Science may seek to explain these miracles, but it is 
the province of history to state the indelible impression 
produced by them, on the people who witnessed them. 
Never was a doubt raised in Israel as to the divinity of 
the Sinaic revelation. The Jews of the time of Jesus, 
impatient as they were to hail the advent of the Messiah, 





* Exodus xiv. 13—14, + Ibid. xix. 10, etc. 
t Deut. v. 22. _ § Deut. xxix. 2. 


5. 


30 | THE DEICIDES. 


watchful for every sign that could reveal his presence, 
would have bounded with joy and hope, could they have . 
known the supernatural events which, according to his 
biographers, had marked the baptism of Christ. This 
proof was denied them, and they continued to see in 
Jesus only a man of wisdom superior to that possessed 
by the masses, it is true, but not a God, nor even a “son 
of God.’””* 


III. 


Yet the hour had come; his ideas and his great de- 
signs had been long matured in his soul.t 

He began his predictions, gathered to himself several — 
devoted disciples, and traversed the towns. of Judea, 
denouncing the chiefs of the nation and insisting on the 
necessity of great moral and social reforms. 

When listening to him, the first sentiment of the people 
was one of admiration; in his words breathed the in- 





* This title, “son of God,” is often employed in the Bible 
without any idea of its attributing Divinity to him to whom it 
is applied. In the Psalms, David is frequently called the “son 
of God.” In exaggerated metaphorical language, to God is 
given this expression, “this day I have begotten thee;’ but 
David, in consequence of that figure, never proclaimed him- 
self, or was declared “ God.” The epithet of God, which is 
synonymous with the adjective “divine,” is again and again 

employed in the Bible to express superiority. The mountain 
of God is said, to indicate a very high mountain; the wind of 
God, a violent wind ; man of God, son of God, a man of intel- 
ligence, who appears to be inspired by God Himself. Jesus, 
therefore, might have been denominated the “son of God,” 
without offending the ears, the consciences, or the traditions of 
Israel. But we shall perceive later that his disciples and even 
he himself, attached to this designation the real conception of 
a divine origin and essence. 

+ See also Paralipomenes, Book viii, 6. 


THE DEICIDES. ay 


spiration and the expression of the great days of pro- 
phecy. His sermon on the mount* is still a model of 
the loftiest precepts of morality, charity and virtue. 
Under a new form, it sums up all that is purest and lof- 
tiest in the sacred books of Israel. In it, Jesus exhibits 
himself as: one of the greatest moralists of ancient or 
modern times; but above all, he therein shows himself 
to be a faithful follower of the law delivered to the He- 
brews. He calls upon man to respect the ordinances of 
the sacred Code; he severely reprimands those of the 
chiefs or people who have forsaken the principles of the 
law of God; but he does not intimate that anything ad- 
mits of change, either in the text, or in the spirit of that 
legislation which had governed Israel since the time of 
Moses. “Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or 
title shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be ful- 
filled. Whosoever therefore, shall break one of these 
least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall 
be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. Think 
not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: 
I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.’t The Jews 
perceived anew in these declarations, the permanent 
teachings of the great doctors of Israel; they listened 
attentively to the new Rabbi, and everywhere greeted 
him with this revered title. 

But the dawning reputation of Jesus produced no deep 
impression even in his own country: the inhabitants of 
Nazareth who were intimately acquainted with his family 
and his antecedents, were not greatly disposed to see a 
prophet, much less a God, in the carpenter’s son, who 
had passed his childhood and youth among them with- 
out any remarkable incidents. They were for the most 





* Matt. v. to vii. We shall examine further on, this beauti- 
ful sermon with all the interest it deserves. 
¢ Matt. v. 17—19. 


32 THE DEICIDES. 


part sceptical as to his pretended mission and his super- 
natural virtues and were shocked, even at his claim to 
the gift of prophecy. So Jesus soon left Nazareth, say- 
ing “A prophet is not without honour, save in his own 
country and in his own house.” “And,” adds the Gos- 
pel, “he did not many mighty things there, because of 
their unbelief.”* Yet his renown increased and extended. 
He performed miracles; it was said that above all, he 
cured the sick and exorcised those who were possessed. 
A great number of wonderful facts were related on this 
subject, which attracted around him a crowd of diseased 
persons, who hoped to obtain speedy relief. It is im- 
portant to describe here, the species of influence that 
the possession of such miraculous power as that ascribed 
to Jesus by the Gospel, was likely to exercise over the 
imagination, or on the belief of such a people. 


IV. 


IF religious faith accepts, can history and philosophy 
admit with equal facility, the truth of the miracles with 
which the Gospel teems and which, in the eyes of the 
Christians, have ever presented a striking proof of the 
divinity of Jesus? 

Here a question arises. It concerns the important 
problem of the supernatural in the history of humanity. 

In furtherance of a great moral revelation, with the 
aim of enlightening or saving peoples, doth God disturb 
the fundamental laws of nature? Doth He suddenly 
modify that universal order which His creative power 
has subjected to constant and immutable laws, in ac- 
cordance with events occurring on our insignificant 
planet? Did He stop the course of the sun, and inter- 
rupt the regular motion of the planets, in order to permit 
Joshua to vanquish the Amorites? Did He divide the 





** Matt. xiii. 54—58; Mark vi. 4. 


THE DEICIDES. 33 


waters of the Red Sea and did He open up a deep path 
betiwveen two watery walls, where the Israelites passed 
over on dry ground? Did He also grant unto certain 
prophets, the power of modifying the laws of nature, of 
reviving the dead, and throwing the elements into dis- 
order? Did He permit them to contro] the winds and 
the thunder, and to be the agents and the ministers of 
His will upon earth? Important questions, which scep- 
tical science solves by a bold denial, but which pious 
faith scarcely dares to discuss. To range oneself under 
the banner of science, or with blind faith, to admit what 
is impossible, what is absurd, and believe that the less a 
matter can be understood, the more divine is its charac- 
ter, exposes us to equal difficulty, equal danger. There 
are inthis problem, such mysterious abysses, that human 
reason is overwhelmed and lost. The miraculous is 
around us, is within us, and habit alone has rendered it 
familiar to us. Creation, birth, life and death, move- 
ment, the variety of beings, thought and its productions, 
physical force and its results, liberty, reason, conscience, 
causes and effects are so many miracles which are daily 
in action around us and in which dwells infinite and un- 
definable power, srorennSip beer? alike in its essence 
and its operations. 

Is it then possible to assign limits to the power of. 
Him, whom in our feeble language we call God, to this 
Cause of all causes, the Former of all which our eyes 
behold? Can He not undo that which He hath done? 
Can He not suspend and stop the universal movement, 
which He alone hath originated? Are special miracles 
impossible to Him, from whom emanates the ‘grand 
miracle of the universe and of life? Who dares to assert 
this? Here the human mind finds itself placed on the 
terrible brink of the bottomless gulf called the Infinite; 
and its weakness and its imperfections must ever render 
the solution of the problem impossible. The Infinite 
alone can comprehend the Infinite. Thus, to deny the 


34 THE DEICIDES. 


miraculous on the ground of our limited reason and 


our impotent philosophy, would be but pride and rash- 
ness, 


V. 


SCIENCE, it is true, correctly observes that miracles 
which are irreconcilable with the dark mystery of 
creation, have become more and more rare in proportion 
as human intelligence has advanced. Primitive peoples 
explained all that they did not understand as a miracle ; 
progress in science has given the key to numerous phe- 
nomena, formerly considered as divine manifestations, 
and they no longer cause surprise to the narrowest in- 
telligence. Science has not driven God out of the Uni- 
verse, but it has cleared up many points which were in- 
explicable to the ignorance of the earliest ages. It has 
elevated the conception of the Divinity, inasmuch as _ 
His sacred name is no longer associated with the most 
trifling incidents of national and individual life; and by 
circumscribing the action of His infinite Providence, to 
the universal harmony and the eternal development of 
beings, and worlds. 

The learned add that in ancient times, no miracle was 
ever confirmed by authentic and narrow mathematical 
proofs. It owed its authority far more to popular credu- 
lity, than to its clearness. Even in our time, how many 
facts pass for miraculous which, when subjected to close 
scientific investigation, appear to be only natural phe- 
nomena. Unless indeed they are juggling tricks, used 
to take advantage of the childlike belief of the masses, 
or to promote the interests of religious comedians. | 

In this age of ours, so little prone as it is to accept- 
ance of the marvellous, if a man pretended to be sent 
by God and to be endued with the power of working 
miracles, the Academy of Sciences would call him before 
their bar, would compel him to give an account of his 


THE DEICIDES. 35 


modus operandi, and would subject his wonder-working 
to so severe a scientific investigation, that doubt would 
no longer be possible. Cagliostro, and more recently 
Home, pretended to perform in the world of Spirits 
wonders wholly different from those, of which the sacred 
writings impute the power to the prophets and men of 
God. Our sceptical society looked upon them only as 
skillful quacks, not seers of Demi-Gods; they were 
‘ amused at their mysterious experiments, and did not 
honour them by opposition or discussion. 


VI. 


OF what avail would it be to us, to decide between 
science, that derides, and faith that affirms. We should 
only contribute a new hypothesis, admitting of no pos- 

sible demonstration, in a matter which refers to the in- 
- scrutable relation between the Finite and the Infinite; 
between the creatures and the Creator, between the 
world and God. The wisest course is to abstain from 
discussing this point. Leave those who believe in the 
enjoyment of their faith, and their doubts to those who 
doubt: let it suffice unto us, to adore that incompre- 
hensible Being, the inexplicable principle of all souls 
and of all bodies, the beneficent God, the Eternal Foun- 
tain of all good, of all beauty and of all truth, the ideal 
of justice and of love, whom the human race approaches 
day by day, on the wonderful path of which each step 
is progress. 

Besides, this vain investigation is useless in reference 
to the subject with which we are occupied: for it could 
lead to no certain result. 

The Hebrews believed in miracles; their historical 
books and their traditions teem with supernatural events. 
To ascertain what meaning and what character they im- 
puted to the wonders wrought before their eyes, is the 
only important point. - Was Thaumaturgy, according to 


36 THE DEICIDES. 


the principles of Judaism and the doctrines of the syna- 
gogue, a proof of divinity? Did the true or pretended 
miraclcs attributed to Jesus by his biographers, neces~ 
sarily reveal him as a God, to his contemporaries ? This 
is the only interesting point of the investigation in which 
we are engaged. 


VI. 


As regards the marvellous, the Jewish doctrine is as 
simple as it is profound. 

The Jews admitted the miraculous, but denied to it 
the power of enforcing error, injustice, or absurdity. 

Deuteronomy has, on this point, a passage of remark- 
able perspicacity. ‘‘If there arise among you a prophet, 
or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a 
wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass 
whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after 
other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve 
them, thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that 
prophet.” * Thus in the eyes of the Israelites, the per- 
formance of a miracle did not suffice to sanctify the 
mission of a messenger of God. Its proof was the truth 
of his words, the agreement of his teachings with the 
immortal promises of Sinai; he who preaches lies and 
impiety, he who seeks to turn the people to false Gods, 
or to false conceptions of the Divinity, may perform 
miracles in vain; not only must his words be unheeded, 
but he is to suffer punishment. This doctrine had been 
greatly developed and boldly followed. At the time of 
Jesus, the teachings of the Synagogue did not admit of 
a miracle being sufficient to demonstrate a truth; they 
demanded that the truth should be of itself demon- 
strable. 

In the traditions of the second temple, we meet an 





* Deuteronomy xiii. 1, etc. 


THE DEICIDES. 37 


example of this as striking as it is sublime. It enables 
us to determine the high honor in which free enquiry 
as to matters of religion was held by those Pharisean 


doctors, whom the gospel has so misrepresented before 
the tribunal of history. 


VIII. 


In* one of the celebrated academies where all the sages 
of Israel were assembled, there arose an important dis- 
cussion between Rabbi Eliezer, one of the glories of 
the Synagogue, and his colleagues, as to the interpreta- 
tion of certain doctrinal matters referring to things clean 
and unclean. All the arguments advanced by Rabbi 
Eliezer in support of his opinions had been unanimously 
opposed and rejected by the other doctors. ‘ Well,” 
indignantly exclaimed the illustrious Rabbi, “let this 
banana part from its roots, and plant itself on the oppo- 
site side.”” At these words, the tree detached itself from 
its roots, and planted itself on the opposite side. ‘‘ What 
does that prove?’ cried the doctors with one voice, 
“and what connection has the value of this banana 
with the question which occupies us?” <‘ Well,” again 
exclaims Rabbi Eliezer, ‘‘ may the rivulet that flows near 
us, demonstrate the truth of my opinion ;” and suddenly, 
oh miracle! the waters of the brook reascended to their 
source. ‘‘ Well,” once more replied the other doctors, 
“whether the waters flow in one direction or another, 
what connection is there between this circumstance and 
the subject of our controversy?” ‘“ Well,” impatiently 
said Rabbi Eliezer, ‘‘may the walls of this room serve 
me as proof and testimony ;’ and the pillars supporting 
the edifice bow, obedient to the voice of their master, 
and the walls crack and threaten to overwhelm them. 
Then Rabbi Schoschonah, one of the most renowned 
sages of his age, exclaimed, ‘“‘O walls! O walls! when 





* Talmud Babo Meziah, folio 59. 
G 


38 THE DEICIDES. 


Sages discuss the interpretation of the law, what have 
you to do with their argumentation?” And the walls 
stopped as they were falling, and remained leaning sus- 
pended over the heads of the doctors. ‘“‘May God Him- 
self pronounce supreme judgment,’ cried Rabbi Eliezer, 
and from the heavenly heights, the daughter of the voice 
was heard saying, ‘“‘ No longer call in question the doc- 
trine of Rabbi Eliezer, reason is on his side.” 

Rabbi Schoschonah enters his protest ; “ Neither rea- 
son, nor the law,” cries he, “is now in the depths of 
the heavens, neither miracles nor mysterious voices 
have, in our eyes, the power to demonstrate the truth. 
To human reason, to the decision of the majority of the 
sages of Israel is committed the interpretation of Thy 
law O Lord! Henceforth these alone are the only powers 
that can avail.” Notwithstanding the miracles that 
were performed, notwithstanding the intervention of 
the divine voice, the opinion of Rabbi Eliezer was con- 
demned by the doctors his contemporaries. And the 
Talmud innocently adds, that Rabbi Nathan, having met 
the prophet Elijah, he asked him what had been said in 
heaven respecting this celebrated debate and received 
the following answer: ‘‘ The Eternal smiled and replied, 
‘My sons are the strongest, my sons have triumphed !’” 
This is manifestly but a legend, in which no historical 
fact can be traced; but it is a legend that involves in 
itself, a whole system. It throws much light on the real 
ideas of the Synagogue and on the doctrine of Judaism 
respecting miracles. It is impossible not to be struck 
by the philosophical independence which is there shown 
and which frees itself from the shackles of a blind belief. 


IX, 


SUCH was not then alone the spirit of the Synagogue, 
but also the exact condition of popular belief at the 
time of Jesus. 


oe 


THE DEICIDES. | 39 


Miracle was accepted as an incomprehensible fact, 
but not as a proof of divinity, and it was invested with 
still less importance and significance, when restricted 
to the cure of human infirmity, or to a species of super- 
natural therapeutics: in fact it was nothing new or 
strange among the Jews that men inspired by God should 
effect the cure of disease by unknown or inexplicable 
means. The Hebrew annals are replete with facts which 
seem to suggest that some privileged beings among 
men possess the wonderful faculty of influencing life 
and death, according to their will. The history of the 
great Jewish prophets is especially characterised by acts 
of this nature. But to none are attributed so many and 
such striking examples as to Elijah and Elisha: the his- 
tory of Elisha particularly, from the number and the 
nature of the miracles performed by him, offers a very 
strong resemblance to that of Jesus. Elijah and Elisha 
twice restored to life, bodies that have been previously 
buried ; the one the son of the widow of Zarephath, the 
other of the Shunamite widow. They also multiplied 
meal and oil* and other articles of food. When a famine 
prevailed at Gilgal, Elisha fed all the people with a single 
pot-full of broth, and twenty loaves of barley bread. - 
And, as says the text, ‘all the people did eat and they 
left thereof.” + He cured Naaman the leper and many 
other diseased persons; f{ lastly, his marvellous power 
became so great, that adead man that was inadvertently 
buried with Elisha, revived and stood on his feet when 
he touched the prophet’s bones.§ Jewish traditions 
abound in similar narratives, thus testifying to the hol- 
iness of certain men of God, as the prophets were de- 
signated, and to the favour with which the Eternal 
listened to their prayers, when they interceded, either 





* 2 Kings iv. I. et seqq. + 2 Kings ib. 44. 
+ 2 Kings v. 14. . § 2 Kings xiii. 21. 


40 THE DEICIDES. 


for individuals, or for the nation. A new class of mir- 
acle-workers existed in Israel at the time of Jesus, who 
though not prophets, were said to perform supernatural 
actions, by means of the all-powerful influence ‘of the 
Ineffable Name. These were the Thaumaturgists or 
-adepts at occult sciences, the most widely spread of 
which was the Kabala, held in much veneration in the 
Old Synagogue. Tradition has preserved the memory 
of several magicians, who, it is said, were contemporaries 
-of Jesus, particularly Simon mentioned in the Gospel 
itself. It speaks of a crowd of cabalistic doctors, stu- 
diously bent over the great work, which has been the 
object ardently pursued by so many lofty intellects, in 
the hope of wresting some might from the infernal and 
' the celestial powers, and even from God Himself. Be- 
sides, according to Jewish polemics, the gift of the mir- 
aculous was not accorded to Israel alone, by the Most 
High: Pagans themselves, apart from divine inspiration, 
are everywhere depicted in the Bible ‘as having the 
power of performing miracles great as those of the pro- 
phets. In imitation of Moses the magicians of Pharaoh 
reproduced every one of the plagues with which the 
great liberator of Israel visited the Egyptians in the 
name of the living God. Balaam prophesies as wonder- 
fully as the Hebrew seers. Thus miracles, and super- 
natural cures were facts to which the eyes and the minds 
of the Jewish people had been long habituated, and 
which, if admitted to be a sign of a mysterious power 
superior to that possessed by the generality of mortals, 
was nevertheless no proof of divinity. Instances there 
were of persons having the power of healing, of work- 
_ ing magic, of inspiration, 6f prophecy, but never had 
they been recognised as divine. 

Now, in examining the miracles which, according to 
the Gospel narrative, were performed by Jesus, we may 
perceive that their aim was essentially the alleviation 
of human suffering. He opened the eyes of the blind, 


THE DEICIDES. 4! 


restored the dumb to speech, and the dead to life, and 
strengthened the paralysed. Like Elijah and Elisha, he 
multiplied some loaves of bread, and two or three fishes, 
to feed a whole people. Like them, he restored dead 
bodies, lying in the tomb, to life. These facts, which 
modern science has sought to explain by natural means, 
spread abroad as they were far and wide, augmented the 
authority, the spell and the reputation of the new Rabbi. 
But no one either in Judea, in Galilee, or elsewhere, 
ever dreamt of connecting with these qualities any idea 
of divinity. According to the Evangelists, the general 
opinion was that a new prophet had arisen in Israel. 
When Jesus arrived at Jerusalem, whither his great 
reputation had preceded him, he produced a great sen- 
sation and the people exclaimed, ‘Here is Jesus the 
prophet of Nazareth and Galilee,’’* and the Gospel adds 
that notwithstanding the violent reproaches which he 
had levelled at the Pharisees and the chiefs of the Pon- 
tiffs, they durst not arrest him in his course, because 
they feared a rising of the masses who believed him to 
be a prophet.t 





* Et cum intrasset Jerosolymam commota est universa civi- 
tas dicens: Quis est hic? Populi autem dicebant: Hic est 
Jesus propheta a Nazareth Galilee. Matthew xxi, Io, LI. 

+ Matthew xxi. 46, 


42 THE DEICIDES. 


FOURTH BOOK. 


Uncertainty of opinions held in Judea with respect to Jesus— 
Irresolution of his disciples—Incredulity to his family— 
Disposition of the magistrates—The attacks made by Jesus 
on public authority—Liberty of speech in Israel—Political 
danger of the sermons of Jesus—His ordinary retinue—Mo- 
deration of the Jewish authorities—The partisans of Jesus 

_ desire to proclaim him King—Benevolence of the Pharisees 
—Political situation of Judea. 


I. 


Ir the majority of the Jews however, recognised Jesus 
to be a new Prophet, opinions are much divided respect- 
ing him, and the Evangelists betray this anxious condi- 
tion of the public mind. It will be remembered, that at 
Nazareth he had been received with a general outburst 
of incredulity; and if we may believe St. Luke,* the 
people, on a certain occasion, rose against him and drove 
him out of the city; and in Jerusalem and the rest of 
Judea, the same indecision prevailed. While some pro- 
claimed him a Prophet, while others again, enquired if 
he was not Messiah, although the received opinion was 
that the Messiah was not to come from Galilee,t others 





* Luke iv. 28 and 29. 

+ John vii. 4r and52. Quidem autem dicebant: Numquid 
a Galilea venit Christus? Responderunt et dixerunt ei: Num- 
quid et tu Galilezus? Scrutare Scripturas et vide, quid a Gali- 
lea propheta non surgit. 


THE DEICIDES. 43 


believed him to be possessed by the Devil* and threw 
stones at him, as a dangerous madman. 

Indeed, if we rely on the discourses pronounced by 
Jesus in the presence of the people and at the conclu- 
sion of which, the audience proclaimed him to be pos- 
sessed by the demon, we shall perceive that for persons 
who understood literally the words of the new Rabbi, it 
was difficult to comprehend his sermons. He addressed 
them thus:— 

“You neither know me nor my father: if you knew 
who I am, you would also know my father:t ye are from 
beneath, and I am from above; ye are of this world; 
I am not of this world; t I am going whither ye cannot 
follow me; I am from the beginning of all things;§1 
say unto you, I was before Abraham.] Those who be- 
lieve in me, will never die.” These strange assertions 
were incomprehensible to the Jews of that time. John 
while quoting them at length, avows that the hidden 
signification was quite incomprehensible to those pre- 
sent.** 

And the people were much perplexed with regard to 
Jesus. Some declared in his favour, others feared the 
excitement he might occasion among the populace, and 
much uncertainty prevailed in the public mind. His 
disciples themselves did not always seize his meaning, 
_ but were obliged to ask him for an explanation of the 





* Responderunt ergo Judai et dixerunt ei: Nonne bene di-_ 
cimus nos quia Samaritanus es et demonium habes? 
Dixerunt ergo Judei: Nunc cognovimus quia demonium 


habes. . . Tulerunt ergo lapides ut jacerent ineum. John 
Vili. 48, 52, 59. 

+ John viii. 19. t Ibid. 23. § Ibid. 25. 

| Ibid. 58. . “| Ibid. 51. 


** The whole chapter of St. John which refers to this scene 


merits perusal. We print it at the end of the work in the Ap- 
pendix. 


44 | THE DEICIDES. 


words he addressed to the multitude. Sometimes too, 
they remained entirely ignorant of the aim and signifi- 
cance of his discourses. His family, in their turn, 
evinced as much incredulity as the inhabitants of Naza- 
reth ;* his brothers, whom he had refused to see on a 
remarkable occasion,t urged him to show himself by 
striking acts, and incontestable proofs.t They re- 
proached him for the mystery in which he enshrouded 
himself. ‘There is no man,” said they, ‘that doeth 
anything in secret, which he himself desireth to be 
known openly; if thou hast really the power, show thy- 
self to the world.”§ But Jesus hearkened not unto this 
advice, “for,” adds the Gospel, “neither did his brethren 
believe in him.’’] 


IT. 


IT will be easily understood that-the magistrates and 
authorities in Judea, could not entertain any very sym- 
pathetic feelings towards him. Personal motives and 
regard for public order both caused them to consider 
Jesus as a formidable disturber, as a revolutionist to be 
got rid of. 

The personal motives were induced by the virulent 
attacks made upon them daily by the new reformer. 
““Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,’ 
he publicly exclaimed, for ye are like unto whited sepul- - 
chres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are 
within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. 
Hypocrites,** wicked and adulterous race,{tt therefore I 
say unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from . 
you. ‘‘And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be 





* John vii. 12, 42. + Matthew xii. 47; John ii. 4. 
t Matt. xiii. 36; xv. 15,16. § John vii. 4. 
| John vii. 5. J Matt. xxiii. 27. 


** Matt. xxiii, 29. t+ Ibid. xvi. 4. 


THE DEICIDES. 45 


broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind 
him to powder.’’* ‘Woe unto you, Scribes, Pharisees, 
ye generation of vipers, for ye devour widows’ houses, 
for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, how 
can ye escape the damnation of hell? Woe unto you, 
ye blind guides. That upon you may come all the righte- 
ous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of Abel 
unto the blood of Zachariah.” tf 

It does not form part of our plan to discuss in how 
far this violent indignation against the Pharisees was 
justified. It will be seen later by several characteristic 
examples, that Phariseeism, which constituted the 
strength, the greatness, and the salvation of Israel, is in 
no way inferior, as regards moral teaching, to the Gospel 
itself. We may well understand that the vituperative 
speeches pronounced by Jesus against the Pharisees, 
those holding authority over the multitude and objects 
of their respect, (whether well founded or exaggerated) 
were not calculated to conciliate, or to secure the favor 
of the religious and political chiefs of Judea. 

Yet the Pharisees were obliged to submit patiently to 
his severe censures. In Jewish society, freedom of speech 
had ever prevailed, unlimited and uncontrolled. The 
prophets were not only the inspired Seers of God, who 
predicted the future and revealed the decrees of Heaven ~ 
to Israel, they were also political tribunes filled with 
energy and courage, exerting extraordinary influence 
over the minds of the masses, declaiming unchecked, 
against rulers and kings, condemning and deposing 
princes; and enforcing by their prestige and boldness 
the submission of the very persons whom they de- 
-nounced. 

Among no other people and at no other epoch, in 
ancient or modern times, was the right of discussion 
carried further, or more freely exercised than in Judea. 





* Matt. xxi. 43, 44. + Ibid. xxiii. 33, 35. 


46 , THE DEICIDES. 


How insipid and feeble is the revolutionary eloquence 
of our day, compared with the fiery harangues addressed 
to Kings and people by the Isaiahs, Jeremiahs and 
Ezekiels, and by that prophetic constellation, whose 
masculine utterances at this distant period excite our 
admiration. The right of speech was then sacred in Is- 
rael, and the man who came to denounce and to brand 
the crimes of the great, and the errors of the people in 
the name of the living God, and of public morality, was 
revered by all the citizens, as he was inviolable before 
the law. 

Thus Jesus being greeted by the majority a as a Pro- 
phet, made free use of the privilege granted by early 
habit to the “Men of God.” The words quoted above, 
offer sufficient evidence that he did not restrain the 
violence of his discourses, or of his anathemas. The 
scribes and Pharisees doubtless felt great indignation 
on finding themselves insulted and attacked in public, 
by the violent orations of. the reformer of Nazareth; 
but they bore them in silence, fearing to institute pro- 
ceedings against him, lest a general rising might ensue 
if they touched him, whom the people regarded as a_ 
prophet.* Nevertheless it must be admitted that their 
resentment against Jesus was justified by the new pro- 
phet’s violence. 

Even now, in the midst of the ninetechits century, at 
a period of universal enlightenment and progress, were 
a popular orator to indulge in the least of these accusa- 
tions and menaces against the established authority and 
the magistrates of the state, which Jesus uttered, eighteen 
hundred years ago, against the Pharisees and the scribes, 
in vain would such a man declare that he came in the 
name of God, and that he was the son of the Eternal; 
in vain would he claim the right of free enquiry and the 





* Metuerunt turbas quoniam sicut prophetam eum habe- 
bant. Matthew xxi. 46, 


>» ‘ 
THE DEICIDES. 47 


inviolability of the prophetic character; he would at once 
be arrested, imprisoned, tried and condemned without 
extenuating circumstances, “as guilty of offences against 
the depositories of public authority, and for exciting 
hatred and contempt against the government.”* 


Ill. 


_ THE reasons were no less weighty which, in the interest 
of general order, rendered Jesus a dangerous character 
in the eyes of the public men of Judea. | 

Like all political reformers, he threw himself for sup- 
port on the masses ; he preferred addressing them, since 
he was sure to be listened to with attention, when de- 
claiming against the excesses and abuses of power, and 
against the vices of the government of his time. He 
said, “ But many that are first shall be last, and the last 
shall be first.t Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles 
exercise dominion over them; but it shall not be so 
among you; but whosoever will be great among you, 
let him be your minister, and whosoever will be chief 
among you, let him be your servant.t Whosoever 
therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the 
same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”§ Again he 
said, ‘‘It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of 
a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom 
of God.’ 7 

The logical consequence of his doctrines was commu- 
nism; and no one could enter the commune without 
dispossessing himself ofall his wealth. The poor were 





* Laws of the 17th May, 1819; March 25th, 1822 ; September, 
1835. 

+ Luke xiii. 30; Matthew xix ; Ibid xx. 16. 

t Matthew xx. 25—27; xxiii. 11, 12. 

§ Matthew xviii. 4. | 

{] Matthew xix. 21—24 ; .Mark x. 25; Luke xviii, 22. 


48 THE DEICIDES. 


to be the most powerful in the kingdom of heaven, and 
the episode of Lazarus and of the rich man excluded 
from heavenly happiness, solely because he had had his 
portion of good in this life, is a very significant proof of 
this theory.* Jesus exhorted his disciples to leave their 
parents, to free themselves from all ties, and from all 
family duties, tc devote themselves entirely to him. In 
certain cases, he pardoned adultery, and proclaimed the. 
illegality of*human justice, and of the right of punish- 
ment. Finally, he unreservedly declared that he came, 
not to bring peace but war, that he came to separate 
the son from his father, the daughter from her mother, 
and to sow dissension in the midst of the family circle.f 

All these acts, all these principles may without doubt 
be explained by a kind of transcendental morality and 
philosophy. After the lapse of many centuries, the 
origin of an era of progress, of civilisation, of universal 
charity may be therein discovered. But in the estima- 
tion of contemporary authority, so ill-treated generally 
besides by Jesus, it could be only regarded as open re- 
volt against social order. For every regularly ordered 
state subsists not by means of a superhuman morality 
and of abstract theories only, but rather by means of 
positive laws, rigidly enforced and respected by all mem- 
bers of the community.f 3 

Indeed, Jesus did not even confine himself to those 





* Luke xvi. 1I9—3T. + Matthew x. 34, and xix. 29. 

¢{ The episode of the woman taken in adultery [John viii. 3, 
etc.] is certainly sublime as an expression of kindness and 
mercy ; but the maxim then declared by Jesus if regarded ina 
social point of view, led to nothing short of rendering the action 
of the tribunals impossible and illegal. It was the absolute 
denial of the right of judging and of punishing. In fact such 
was really the substance of his doctrine, for, on another and 
less solemn occasion, he said to his disciples, “Judge not, less 
ye be judged.” Matthew vii. 1. 


THE DEICIDES. 49 


maxims, which must necessarily have appeared revolu- 
tionary to those invested ‘with power; but he also de- 
clared that from his time, and even from that of John 
the Baptist, the whole law was abrogated and no longer 
possessed compulsory power.” 

But the most serious circumstance, in the opinion of 
the magistrates charged with the maintenance of public 
order, was that Jesus was habitually surrounded by an 
escort consisting of his favourite disciples. These had 
been selected from the lowest ranks of the social scale; 
fishermen, like Simon, Andrew, James and John; pub- 
licans, like Matthew. Around them gathered a crowd 
of publicans, of petty officials, despised and hated by 
the people, because they were charged with the collec- 
tion of the taxes, and were persons of doubtful character. 

These were joined by a needy crowd, who rejoiced in 
hearing it proclaimed that the rich could not enter the 
kingdom of heaven, and by sick poor, eager to approach 
the new Rabbi, whose touch was of healing power. 


IV. 


WE ask our readers to place themselves for a moment 
in imagination, in the position of the authorities of Judea, 
it being conceded that they did not recognise in Jesus, 
a God who had come from heaven to save the human 
race ; we ask them to remember how alarming was this 
assemblage of ill-conducted vagrants, led by a violent 
preacher, who declaimed without hesitation against the 
established powers and against the whole society of his 
age; and they will at once admit that the magistrates 
had some reason for apprehension and for adopting 
measures by which the agitation excited among the mas- 
ses by Jesus, should be prevented from degenerating 
into disorder and revolution. With the warning gentle- 





* Luke xvi. 16, 


go THE DEICIDES. 


ness which characterised the Jewish legislation and the 
functionaries charged with its execution, they had sev- 
eral times admonished the disciples of Jesus by saying: 
“Why does your master eat and drink with publicans 
and people of vicious lives?’’* Jesus offered an admir- 
able reply to this question, a reply preserved in the Gos- 
pel. He said: “The sick require the doctor, not those 
who are in health. I do not come for the just, but for 
sinners.’’+ But sublime as was the end, the means for 
its attainment were, in the opinion of the magistrates 
none the less dangerous. The crowd that gathered round 
the new master, daily increased in number; the ideas 
and passions of the populace were excited, and their 
enthusiasm was awakened by his words. Among the 
doubtful characters who followed him, and who accepted 
only such portions of his predications as corresponded 
with their secret instincts against the rich and the power- — 
ful, this disorder might have easily been followed by 
seditious movements and actual insurrection. In fact, 
at one moment, led away by their ardour and probably 
hoping that if Jesus was once invested with authority, 
he would carry out his maxims of equality and his pro- 
mised measures in favour of the poor and the masses, 
his partisans resolved to proclaim him King. Every- 
thing was prepared; they were to possess themselves of 
his person and to raise him by force to the supreme 
power. John, who reveals this conspiracy, tells us at 
the same time, that Jesus, wiser and more prudent than 
his disciples, having been informed of this design and 
considering it impracticable, once more fled to the moun- 
tains.{ The only result of this abortive plot was to 
redouble the vigilance of the magistrates, and to excite 
- mm the highest degree the anger of Herod, who being 
then invested with authority regarded Jesus as a rival 





* Mark ii. 16. + Ibid. 17. t John vi. 15, 


THE DEICIDES. 52 


and a pretender, in other words an enemy whom he must 
render powerless. Having previously caused John the 
Baptist to be imprisoned and beheaded,* Herod then 
ordered that Jesus should be arrested. 

Here a striking circumstance may be remarked, indi- 
cative of the passionate and prejudiced nature of the 
accusations directed by Jesus against the Pharisees; for 
we find that moved by a most laudable feeling of com- 
passion, and unmindful of the attacks of which they 
themselves had been the objects, they went to warn 
Jesus of the inimical designs of Herod.t When they 
advised him to escape, he replied to them, ‘‘Go ye, and 
tell that fox, Behold I cast out devils, and I do cures to- 
day and to-morrow, and the third day I shall be perfec- 
ted. Nevertheless I must walk to-day and to-morrow 
and the day following.” In fact, he followed their coun- 
sel and avoided the persecution of Herod, (to whom as 
we have seen he evinced no greater courtesy than he 
had done to the scribes and Pharisees,) by immediate 
flight, in order to fulfil his mission. __ 


ve 


Tuus, if the masses could see and even revere in Jesus, 
a prophet, who spoke in the name of the God of Israel, 
with that independence which had ever been the privi- 
lege of the religious tribunes of Judea ;—the magistrates 
being of a cooler temperament, and less easily carried 
away than the populace, regarded him as a dangerous 
agitator, who surrounded by a crowd of persons of bad 
character, was likely to cause serious disturbances in 
the towns in which he preached his new social doctrines. 
Many peaceful citizens shared, in this respect, the fears 
of the heads of the nation, and popular tumults were 
often apprehended. We have just seen indeed, that the 





* Matthew xiv. Io, ¢ Luke xiii. 31 et seqq. 


52 THE DEICIDES. 


disciples of Jesus, either without his knowledge, or with 
his consent, actually contemplated investing him with 
sovereign authority and raising him to the throne. 

Nor must we forget, that at the period at which these 
events occurred, Judea was torn by violent dissensions 
within, and threatened with serious dangers from with- 
out. The Jewish people had yielded reluctantly to the 
yoke of the Romans and to their interference in the 
affairs of Judea. Herod was detested, as the represen- 
tative of the powerand of the ideas of Rome> The minds 
of men were divided by a violent party spirit. The zea- 
lots dreamed of the deliverance of their holy country, 
and were burning to revenge their recent defeats. Never 
had the position of affairs been more threatening; inter- 
nal agitation and strife, dark forebodings of an approach- 
ing national struggle against the Romans, then masters 
oi the world. Assuredly, this was not the moment to 
think of social reforms, or questions of speculative mo- 
rality; it was not the moment to give the rein to trib- 
unes, who would seek to arouse the passions of the 
people, and endanger the public peace. It was necessary 
to cement the union of the citizens and the national 
interests, and not to foster division which would neces- 
sarily facilitate the designs of the Romans and hasten 
the final subjection of Judea. 

The speeches of Jesus, the new party of which he was 
the chief and the soul, and the ardour of his disciples 
were, under these circumstances, perilousin the extreme; 
the Jewish magistrates cannot with justice, be reproached 
for having employed every means in their power, to 
avert these consequences. | 

One thing alone in their eyes could have justified the 
words and the acts of Jesus; the irrefutable proof that 
he was really the expected Messiah. We have seen 
how earnest and general, at this epoch, was the hope of 
a liberator. The Jews, chiefs and people, all longed for 
the hour of their deliverance ; they turned their anxious 


THE DEICIDES. 53 


gaze to the four quarters of the heavens, for the reveal- 
ing signs which would announce the saviour of Israel. 
Had Jesus, justifying this sacred title, boldly proclaimed 
that he came to free the Jews from a foreign yoke, to 
re-establish the throne of David, and—a second Moses, 
—to snatch Israel from a Roman Egypt, if, above ail, 
he had revealed his mission of deliverer by striking 
manifestations, the whole of Judea would have followed 
him with acclamation. 

We shall presently see pontiffs, chiefs of the people, 
doctors of law, scribes and Pharisees hasten to him, 
full of anxiety and hope, entreat him to declare truly 
unto them whether in him they might salute the pro- 
mised Messiah, and to reveal to them a sign, by which | 
they might recognise him; but we shall also see Jesus 
harshly repel them, obstinately refuse the manifestations 
they ask of him, and shroud himself more and more, in 
systematic mystery. 


54 THE DEICIDES. 


FIFTH BOOK. 


Uncertainty of opinion as to the messianic character of Jesus 
—He reveals himself to his apostles—He forbids their saying 
aught about him to the Jews—Motives for this prohibition— 
Doubts as to the descent of Jesus—Incredulity strengthened 
by his discourses—J ustification of the urgency of the Jews— 
Reiterated demands for proofs—Refusal, and évasive replies 
of Jesus—The people beseech him to make himself known ; 
he refuses. © 


ie 


Jesus in fact, allowed himself to be greeted as the pre- 
dicted Christ, Redeemer of Israel, by his disciples and by 
the populace that crowded around him; but when asked 
to confirm his title and his authority by positive proofs, 
his replies were far from satisfactory. 

Besides, though the people were almost unanimous in 
recognising and welcoming him as a new prophet, public 
opinion was far more undecided regarding his messianic 
character. Some, as we have seen above, supposed him 
to be John the Baptist, restored to life; others to be 
Elijah; others Jeremiah; others again one of the great 
prophets ;* but very few admitted him to be the Christ. 

He took great care to make himself acquainted with 
the prevailing impression in this respect, and his dis- 
ciples reported to him, the various rumours that were 
current respecting him.t ‘And you,” said he one day 





* “ And they said: Some say that thou art John the Baptist ; 
some Elias: and others Jeremias, or one of the prophets.’ 
Matthew xv1. 14. 

¢ Ibid. xvi. 13. 


Re. 


THE DEICIDES. 55 


to his apostles, “‘who do you think I am?” Simon 
Peter, replied, ‘‘Thou art Christ, the son of the living 
God.” ‘Happy art thou, Simon, son of Jonah,” an- 
swered Jesus, “in that this revelation hath been made 
to thee, not by flesh and blood, but “be the inspiration of 
my Father who is in heaven.’* 


This is the first time since he began to preach, that 
Jesus had solemnly assumed the title of Messiah in the. 
presence of his own disciples.t 


The text which we have just quoted is important in so 
far, that it proves that the son of Mary had not, previ- 
ously, revealed his final projects, even to his most inti- 
mate adherents, that they had until then, esteemed him 
to be only a sage, a man inspired by God, a prophet, a 
great reformer, not the Christ who was to save Israel. 


Since Jesus had at length made himself known, it may 
be presumed that he purposed then, to raise the veil 
which still concealed him, and to shine forth in the 
sight of the whole nation, and in all the splendour of his 
divine apostolate. This is erroneous. Scarcely had he 
received from Simon Peter the revealing answer we 





* Dixit illis Jesus: Vos autem, quem me esse dicitis? Re- 
spondens Simon Petrus dixit, Tu es Christus, filius Dei vivi. 
Respondens autem Jesus, dixit ei: Beatus es, Simon bar Jonze, 
quia caro et sanguis non revelavit tibi, sed Pater meus qui in 


‘coelis est. Matthew xvi. 15, 16,17. This happy reply secured 


to Simon Peter, not only the distinction of being entitled the 
Keystone of the future Church and the office of holding the 
keys, but also the promise, that what he should loose, or bind 
on earth, should be loosed or bound in heaven. Matthew 
xvi. 18—1g. It is well known that the Papal authority and 
the supremacy, material and spiritual, of the Bishop of Rome 
is grounded on this Gospel text. 
+. Matthew xvi. 20. See also Luke ix, 21. 


56 THE DEICIDES. 


have just cited, than he expressly forbade his disciples, 
from telling any man that he was the Christ.* 

Moreover, this recommendation is not the only one of 
a likeimport that the Gospels record. It will be remem- 
bered, that at the time of the pretended apparition of 
Moses and Elijaht to Jesus at his transfiguration, the 
witnesses of the miracle, Peter, James, and John were 
ordered to say nothing of any one respecting this vision. 

Neither can we forget the reproach that his brothers 
addressed to Jesus concerning the mystery in which he 
shrouded himself, and the repeated counsel they gave 
him, to avow himself at length in an open and public 
manner.{ 

Luke and Mark, who likewise relate Simon Peter’s 
" answer to Jesus’s inquiry, add that Jesus manifested dis- 
pleasure at this revelation, and seriously reproved his 
disciples, admonishing them to say nothing to any one 
whatever.§ 


II. 


IT is desirable to state clearly, the mutive which induced 
Jesus to enjoin on them complete Silence. It is set forth 
in the narrative of Luke, thus: Simon Peter had just an- 
swered, “Thou art the Christ, the son of God.” Then Jesus 
reproving them, (adds the Gospel,) straightly charged 
them and commanded them to tell no man that thing, 





* Tunc precepit discipulis suis ut nemini dicerent quia ipse 
esset Jesus Christus. Matthew xvi. 20; Luke ix. 21. 

+ Luke, who also records the transfiguration on Mount Ta- 
bor, adds that the disciples scrupulously obeyed the orders of 
Jesus, and spoke to no one of what had happened. Et ipsi 
tacuerunt et nemini dixerunt in illis diebus quidquam ex his 
quz viderant. Matthew xvii. 9; Luke ix. 36. 

¢ John vii. 4. 

§ At ille increpans illos, precepit ne cui dicerent hoc, Luke 
ix, 2r. 


THE DEICIDES. 57 


because said he, ‘‘The son of man must suffer many 
things, and he rejected of the elders and chief priests 
and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day.’’* 
Peter frightened at these mournful predictions, ex- 
claimed, ‘‘ Be it far from thee, Lord; this shall not be 
unto thee.”” But he turned and said unto Peter: “Get 
thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me; 
for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but 
those that be of men.’’t 

The great importance of this passage may be easily 
understood. The founder of Christianity voluntarily 
left the Jews in ignorance of his mission. And where- 
fore? In order that the Hebrew magistrates, being in 
the dark regarding him and considering him merely as 
a common agitator and threatening revolutionist, might 
prosecute and sentence him to death. 

How strange a part then, did he seek to assign to the 
whole nation and to its chiefs, in the drama of his life 
and of his death. For they had but two alternatives; 
the one, in their ignorance of his messianic character to 
prosecute him as a disturber of the public peace, and to 
condemn him according to law; and in this case, how 
could they be blamable in the eyes of posterity for hav- 
ing regarded him only as an ordinary criminal; or, 
adopting the second alternative, to leave his attempt to 
stir up revolt, unheeded or unpunished? But then, in 
face of the non-fulfilment of his predictions, what would 





* Precepit ne cui dicerent hoc, dicens quia oefortet filium ho- 
minis multa pati, et reprobari a senioribus, principibus sacer- 
dotum et scribis et occidi, et tertia die resurgere. Luc. ix: 
21, 22; Matthew xvi. 21. 

+ Et assumens eum Petrus, coepit increpare illum dicens, 
Absit a te Domine; non erit tibi hoc? Qui conversus, dixit 
Petro: Vade post me Satana; scandalum es mihi, quia non 
sapis ea que Dei sunt, sed eaque hominum. Matthew xvi. 
22, 23. 


58 THE DEICIDES. 


have become of his pretensions to the title of Son of 
God and Messiah? 3 

In either event, the Jews were certainly not guilty in 
not recognising one, who adapted so much precaution 
to avoid being known. What responsibility could they 
possibly have incurred, if it is true that Jesus rendered 
them, voluntarily and designedly, the fatal instruments 
of torments, which he himself declared to be indispens- 
able to the success of his work? 


LEH. 


BESIDES, neither his deeds, nor his words were calculated 
to inspire the nation with the conviction that he was the 
Messiah, the deliverer of the people of God. It is well 
known that the Messiah was to be of the royal race, a 
lineal descendant of David. Those who said of Jesus, 
‘But is he not the son of the carpenter of Nazareth? 
Do we not know his mother, his brothers and sisters ?’’* 
were certainly little inclined to see in him, the legitimate 
heir of the great Hebrew Monarch. Aware of the objec- 
tions to which his genealogy might give rise, he endeav- 
oured to spread the idea that the Messiah needed not 
necessarily to be the son of David. One day, when sur- 
rounded by the Pharisees, he asked them, ‘“‘‘ What think 
ye of Christ? Whose son is he to be?’ They answered 
him, ‘The son of David.’ ‘ Howthen,’ he rejoined, ‘does 
David call him his Lord? If David calls him Lord, how 
then could he be his son?’ ’’t 

This was, in fact, the denial of one of the most gene- 





* Matthew xiii. 55. 

+ Congregatis autem Phariseis, interrogavit eos Jesus dicens: 
Quid vobis videtur de Christo? Cujus filius est? Dicunt ei: 
David. Ait illis: Quomodo ergo David in spiritu vocat eum 
Dominum, dicens: Dixit Dominus Domino meo.. . Si ergo 
David vocat eum Dominum, quomodo filius ejus est? Matt. 
XXii. 41 et seqq. 


THE DEICIDES, ~ : 59 


rally accepted traditions of the Synagogue as to one of 
the essential signs by which the Messiah was to make 
manifest his divine mission, and if we may thus express 
it, his legitimacy. Again, the Jews, supported in their 
belief by numerous prophecies, had always considered 
the advent of the messianic epoch, as the inauguration 
of an era of universal peace, concord, and fraternity. 
On this point, Jesus disturbed all their preconceived 
ideas and all their hopes. “Think not that Iam come 
to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but 
a sword, for Iam come to set a man against his father 
and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter- 
in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man’s foes shall 
be they of his household. I am come to send fire on.the 
earth, and what will I, if it be already kindled.’* 

Apologists are not wanting, who give to these very 
significant words, a sense which deprives them of all 
their weight. But in the eyes of the Jews, accustomed 
as they were, to hear all the prophets announce with 
one accord, that-the arrival of the Messiah would bestow 
peace and happiness on the whole earth, and would 
permit the lamb to lie down without fear by the side of - 
the wolf, these menacing predictions were wholly irre- 
concilable with their secular belief. It should therefore 
not surprise us, that they demanded again and again, 
incontrovertible proofs of the messianic character with 
which the popular voice began to invest Jesus. 





* Nolite arbitrari quia pacem venerim mittere in terram: 
non veni pacem mittere sed gladium. Veni enim separare 
hominem adversus patrem suum et filiam adversus matrem 
suam et nutrium adversus socrum suam ; et inimici hominis, 
domestici ejus. Matthew x. 34 et seqq.—Ignem veni mittere 
in terram, et quid volo nisi ut accendatur? Putatis quia pacem 
veni dare in terram? Non, dico vobis, sed separationem. 
Erunt enim ex hoc quinque in domo una divisi, tres in duos 
et duo in tres dividentur. Luke xii. 51, 52. 


60 THE DEICIDES. 


IV. 


THE apologists of the Gospel, finding it impossible to 
justify the mystery in which Jesus never ceased obstin- 
ately to enshroud himself in the presence of the Jewish 
people, accused that people and addressed them in terms 
of bitter reproach for having dared to demand proof of 
him, who presented himself to them as Christ the Re- 
deemer. According to them, his divinity beamed around 
him as a glorious halo, which they must have been blind, 
not to see. : 

This is an argument of sentiment and of faith, but not 
of reason. In order to judge of the attitude assumed by 
the Jews towards Jesus, it is ever indispensable to place 
ourselves mentally amid contemporaneous circumstan- 
ces, and to study historically, the prevailing intellectual 
and spiritual condition of the public mind. At the open- 
ing of this treatise, we enumerated the revealing facts 
which, in accordance with the steadfast traditions of Ju- 
daism, were to characterise the messenger, and the mes- 
sianic epoch. Let us briefly recapitulate them. 

The Messiah was to be a descendant of the house of 
David. 

He was to be preceded by the prophet Elijah. 

He was to ensure the triumph of Israel over all their 
enemies, he was to re-establish the throne of the king- 
prophet, and to make Jerusalem the metropolis of the 
universe. 

The approach of the messianic period was to be 
marked by one of those miraculous phenomena which 
would awaken the remembrance of the splendid scene 
on Sinai. Lastly, peace was to reign over all the earth, 
and the one name of Jehovah was to be universally 
adored. 3 

The Jewish people could not sever their faith in the 
advent of Messiah, from the realisation of these ancient 
promises. Each time that amid national and religious 


4 THE DEICIDES. ce OE 


calamities a man arose claiming to be their long-ex- 
pected deliverer, the first impulse of the Hebrews must 
have been, to require from him unimpeachable signs, 
which would render valid his claim to be recognised and 
welcomed. 

The numerous deceptions of which the Jewish people 
had been the victims, previously to the time of Jesus 
the pseudo-Messiahs who had so often over-excited the 
hopes of Israel, naturally rendered people and chiefs 
more distrustful. 

In this state of affairs, the true Messiah ought to have 
sought, not to conceal himself from, but to wholly reveal 
himself to his contemporaries, and to prove that all the 
prophecies were fulfilled in him. 

But exactly the contrary occurred. 

Elijah the forerunner had not appeared; the descent. 
from David was far from being established in the person 
of the son of Joseph and Mary. Jesus forbade his dis- 
ciples to make him known to the Jews; and still further 
to disturb the messianic ideas of his time, he declared 
that of the temple and of Jerusalem not one stone would 
be left on the other; that the law itself, that law whose 
sublime principles all the nations of the earth would one 
day accept, would be completely abolished; finally, that 
instead of the predicted peace, he brought war. All this 
was so entirely opposed to the hopes of Israel, that it is 
impossible to censure the contemporaries of Jesus, for 
having besought him to grant them some irresistible 
revelation. 3 

Fault is found with what was unjustly called the mat- 
erialistic spirit and the narrow ritualism of the Pharisees 
of that period; but it was not they alone, who enter- 
tained serious doubts as to the mission of the Galilean 
doctor. We have already seen how great was the incre- 
dulity of his family; his own disciples were far from be- 
ing convinced; in their intimate intercourse with their 
master, they frequently entreated him to grant them the 


62 THE DEICIDES, 


prophetic sign by which he was to reveal himself to the 
world. 

This visible sign, these material proofs, which Jesus 
refused to give to the Jews and to the Pharisees, he on 
the contrary promised to his disciples, and he announced 
to them, the coming of the kingdom of God to be 
marked by deeds and phenomena which call to mind all 
the predictions of Zechariah and Malachi. He said:— 
“On the great and solemn day, ye shall see the Son of 
man sitting on the right hand of power. Anda great 
storm, like that of Sinai, shall tear the clouds asunder; 
a bright gleam of celestial fire will shoot from east to 
west, the Son of man will appear in the clouds sur- 
rounded by angels and celestial trumpets will sound 
around.”* These then, were the material signs promised 
by Jesus himself, a promise justifying the pressing de- 
mands of the Pharisees. Since the son of Mary himself 
admitted that these striking proofs were necessary to 
his final revelation, why was he angry and why are his 
apologists angry with the Jews, his contemporaries for 
demanding them during his own life. The disciples 
themselves often asked him, “But when will all these 
things happen?”’t He answered these questions evasively, © 
but he nevertheless affirmed, that several of those around 
him would not pass away, till all these things were ful- 

filled.{ In fact his disciples were in the constant expec- 
tation, after his death, of seeing him appear with all the 
splendour of his divinity.§ 3 
Jesus and the apostles, shared the convictions of the 
Jewish people: they thought as they did, and as they 
did, affirmed that the arrival of the Messiah would be 





a, 


* Matthew xvi., xix., xx., xxiv., xxv.; Mark xiv. 62. 
+ Matthew xxiv. 3; Mark xiii. 4. 

¢ Matthew xxiv. 34; Luke xxi. 32. 

§ Acts of the Apostles i. 11; ibid. iii. 20, 21. 


THE DEICIDES. 63 


marked by miraculous signs in the heavens and on the 
earth. 


This general belief is the one only point which it is 
incumbent on ustoverify. The Hebrews may be blamed 
for having demanded material proofs and mysterious 
_ signs from Jesus; it may be argued, that great truths 
are not proved, and do not win acceptance through such 
means; we do not deny this. But, as soon as it is ad- 
mitted that the essential condition of his messianic 
character, according to the general ideas obtaining at 
that period, was the signs predicted by the prophets and 
announced by Jesus himself, one can only deplore the ~ 
obstinate silence with which he met the frank demand 
of the Hebrews. 


Ve. 


It is impossible for us to quote all the passages in the 
Gospels which testify to the anxiety with which the 
chief priests and the people, the doctors of the law 
and the whole population interrogated the ‘prophet of 
Galilee.”’ Let us confine them to a few essential texts. 
One day, when he had attacked the Pharisees who were 
around him with his usual violence, calling them “a 
race of vipers who were incapable of good sentiments 
and accursed in the present and in the future..... 2 
Some of those whom he treated with this severity, drew 
near unto him and said, ‘‘ But Master, we would see a 
sign from thee, that should prove thy power unto us.” 
Then Jesus exclaimed, “This evil and adulterous genera- 
tion seeketh after a sign, and there shall no-sign be 
given to it but the sign of the prophet Jonas; for as 
Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s 
belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three 


64 THE DEICIDES, “ 


nights in the heart of the earth.”* This mysterious 
allusion to the resurrection was not understood by the 
Hebrews. Besides, was not the postponement until 
after his death, of the appearance of a supernatural sign 
which would reveal him to the Jews of his age as Mes- , 
siah and Son of God, in fact a direct refusal, to give 
proofs which might have enlightened his contemporaries 
and have inspired them with faith in his person and in 
his works? Yan 

Another day, the Sadducees and Pharisees accosted 
him repeating their request, ‘If thou hast the power 
imputed to thee, show usa sign from heaven to convince 
us.” Jesus replied again in the same terms, announcing 
to them the sign of Jonas, and departed, leaving them in 
the same uncertainty as before.t 

St. Mark relates that under similar circumstances, he 
exhibited a yet more obstinate ‘resolve to be silent. 
Some Pharisees came forth and began to question him, 
seeking of him a celestial sign, which might reveal him 
to their eyes.. Jesus only breathed a deep sigh saying, 
“Why does this generation seek after a sign? Verily, I 
say unto you, there shall no sign be given unto them.’’} 
- Instead of decidedly refusing the explanations de- 
manded of him, he often evaded questions, and perplexed 
his interrogators by skilfully raising objections, of which 
the following is an instance. 





-- yD 


* Tunc responderunt ei quidam de scribis et phariszis di- 
centes: Magister, volumus a te signum videre. Qui respon- 
dens ait illis, Generatio mala et adultera signum querit; et 
signum non dabitur ei, nisi signum Jone prophete. Matth. 
xii. 38 et seqq. 

+ Et exierunt phariszi et coeperunt conquirere eum €0 que- 
rentes ab illo signum de ccelo. Et ingemiscens spiritu ait, 
Quid generatio illa signum quzrit? Amen dico vobis, si da- 
bitur generationi isti signum. Mark viii, 11, 12. 

¢t Matthew xvi. I et seqq. 


. THE DEICIDES. 65 


He entered the Temple, teaching and preaching. The 
chief priests and the elders of the people drew near unto 
him and said, “By what authority doest thou these 
things? and who gave thee this power?” To this very 
simple and natural inquiry Jesus replied, “Let me first 
question you on one thing. Did baptism administered 
_ by John proceed from God or man?” The priests and 
the elders hesitated, for if they confessed that John was 
sent by God, the rejoinder might be, ‘‘ Why did ye not 
believe in him’? Had they declared John’s power simply 
human, they would have offended popular opinion, for 
he was universally held to be a prophet. Uncertain, 
they answered Jesus and said, ‘‘ We cannot tell.” “Oh! 
ye cannot tell, neither will I tell you by what authority 
I do these things,’’* 


To perplex his adversaries was doubtless a skillful 
mode of freeing himself from a difficulty ; but it must be 
admitted that it was virtually an absolute refusal to give 
a proof which the elders and pontiffs of Israel had, after 
all, a right to demand. 


Besides, he almost always replied to questions ad- 
dressed to him on important points, in terms which were 
unintelligible to his hearers. ‘‘ When will the kingdom 
of God come ?” one day asked the Pharisees. He replied 
to them, “ The kingdom of God will not come tn a manner 
to be observed, neither will it be said, It is here, or it is 





* Et cum venisset in templum, accesserunt ad eum docen- 
tem principes sacerdotum et seniores populi dicentes ; Tu qua 
potestate hzec facis? Et quis tibi dedit hanc potestatem ? Res- 
pondens Jesus dixit eis; Interrogabo vos et ego unum sermo- 
nem, Baptismus Joannis unde erat? e ccelo an ex hominibus? 
At illi cogitabant inter se... Et respondentes Jesu dixerunt: 
Nescimus: Ait illis et ipse : Nec ego dico vobis in qua potes- 
tate hec facio. Matthew xxi. 23 and 5. Compare Mark xi. 
27, which is even more precise. 


66 THE DEICIDES., 


there, for behold, even now the kingdom of God is 
amongst you.’ 

From all the preceding quotations, it is evident that 
he really employed every possible expedient to prevent 
the reign of God, of whose triumph on earth they were 
to be the agents, from being remarked by the Jews. 

‘“‘ But,” said the Pharisees to him, ‘who art thou then?” 
Jesus replied, “Even that I spoke unto you from the 
beginning.’”’ The unfortunate Pharisees could not, as- 
suredly, discover much meaning in this mystical reply, 
It. was, therefore, not without good reason, that they 
said to him, “Thou bearest testimony to thyself, thy 
testimony therefore is not admissible; prove thy power 
otherwise than by thy own assertions.” 

To this evidently logical observation, Jesus was con- 
tent to reply, “My testimony is true, though I testify 
only unto myself, for I know whence I came and whither > 
I go; but ye, ye know not whence I come or whither I go.t 
It was then, precisely because he left them in complete 





* Interrogatus autem a Phariseis: Quando venit regnum 
Dei? Respondens eis dixit: Non venit regnum Dei cum ob- 
servatione ; neque dicent: Ecce hic aut ecce illic, ecce enim 
regnum Dei intra vos est. Luke xvii. 20 and following. Let 
us here state once for all that all the passages of the Gospel 
texts that we translate into French are quoted from the trans- 
lation of LEMAISTRE DE SACY, the most authorised by 
the Catholic Church.? 

** Dicebant ergo ei: Tu quis es? Dixit eis Jesus, Prin- 
cipium qui et loquor vobis. John viii. 25. 

+ Dixerunt ergo ei phariszi: Tu de te ipso testimonium 
perhibes. Testimonium tuum non est verum. John viii. 13. 

¢ Respondit Jesus et dixit eis: Et si ego testimonium per- 
hibeo de me ipso, verum est testimonium hi enim quia scio 
unde veni et quo vado. Vos autem nescitis unde venio aut 
quo vado. Ibid. 14. 





1 The Translator has followed the English Authorised Version. 


THE DEICIDES. Wie 67 


ignorance, that they ceased not to question him, being 
desirous, as were all the inhabitants of Judea, of at 
length attaining certainty as to his origin, his mission 
and his aim. 

The curiosity and the eager interest of the elders of 
the people furnish additional proof of the emotion that 
Jesus awakened around him, and of the hopes which he 
excited. Had Jesus placed himself at the head of the 
popular party, of which the Pharisees were the moving 
spirit, he would have rallied all minds around him. 

However, we may perceive that he saw, in the demands 
of the Pharisees, scribes and priests, but a machination 
of his natural enemies to tempt and ruin him. A solemn 
occasion at length presented itself for making himself 
known; would he take advantage of it? 

One day he was walking in the temple, under Solo- 
mon’s porch. The populace, long uncertain and hesitat- 
ing regarding him, gathered around and conjured him 
to declare himself. ‘How long,” said the Jews unto 
him, ‘wilt thou keep our minds in suspense? IF THOU 
ART THE MESSIAH, DECLARE IT UNTO US PLAINLY.” * 

The hour was certainly propitious; the severest test 
was there. It was no longer a mere party of cunning 
Pharisees who came to ensnare Jesus; a whole people, 
thirsting for divine aid, were they who supplicated him 
to make himself known, no longer to keep their minds 
in suspense, but to declare at length whether he was 
that Messiah whom they so impatiently expected. Jesus 
again refused any categorical explanation; fresh re- 
proaches were his only answer; he accused the Jews of 
being incredulous; he told them that they were not his 
sheep; that his sheep alone knew him, etc. 





* Et ambulabat Jesus in templo, in porticu Salomonis ; cir- 
cumdederunt ergo eum Judzi et dicebant ei: Quousgue ant- 
mam nostram tollis? Situ es Christus, dic nobis palam. John 
%. 23, 24. | 


68 THE DEICIDES. 


Incredulous! but never was a people, and we cannot 
urge this too strongly, more truly disposed to welcome 
the Saviour of Israel and of the whole human race! 
Incredulous! but by what, it may be asked, would the 
Jews have been justified in believing, either in the mes- 
sianic character, or in the divinity of Jesus? They 
questioned him with manifest sincerity, moved by an 
ardent desire to find in him the long hoped for messen- 
ger of God; he answered them not, he refused to satisfy 
their just demands, or he clothed his reply in impenet- 
rable mystery. Who will dare, in the presence of all 
these facts, to cast blame on the inhabitants of Judea 
for not having recognised in the son of Mary the heir of 
David, the Messiah promised by the prophets? 

Yet, he would doubtless have peacefully continued to 
_ utter his predictions, had they not, by degrees, infringed 
the fundamental principles of the Jewish law: THE AB- 
SOLUTE UNITY AND INVISIBILITY OF GOD. Jesus soon 
began to arrogate to himself a divine nature and autho- 
rity in the presence of the people. This doubtless was 
the basis of his doctrine, as Christianity made it the 
essential dogma of the new faith. Let us follow him into 
this new arena, 


THE DEICIDES. 69 


SIXTH BOOK. 


Jesus ascribes to himself a divine nature—He at first hesitates 
and confines himself. to the remission of sin—Various in- 
stances—Mary Magdalene—Hebrew doctrine as to the for- 
giveness of sin—Unequivocal declaration of his divinity by 
Jesus—Indignation of the Jews—Jesus is deserted by his 
disciples—Statement of the sentiments of the Hebrew people 
—Doctrine of Judaism on the UnrttTy, IMMATERIALITY and 
INVISIBILITY of God—Unalterable attachment of the Hebrew 
people to this belief—Penalties pronounced against prophets 
who taught belief in other Gods, 


I, 


WE are approaching the most critical period in the life. 
of Jesus. The prophet of Galilee, after having in the 
presence of his disciples, if not in that of the people, 
assumed the sacred title of Messiah, after having been 
the object, if not the accomplice, of the abortive con- 
spiracy whose purpose was to raise him to the throne, 
at length aspired to a yet more exalted authority. He 
claimed to be the equal of the living God, Creator of 
heaven and earth. 

In truth, if the tradition relating to the miraculous 
conception and birth of Jesus, was contemporaneous 
with his life, that he should have waited until he had 
attained his thirtieth year without boldly proclaiming 
his divine origin, is wholly inexplicable. Nor can it be 
understood why Mary, to whom the angel of the annun- 
ciation had revealed the divine nature of the infant to 
be born to her, did not make it publicly known, when 
that son sought by his prelections and his miracles, to 

I 


70 THE DEICIDES. 


disseminate a new doctrine and new tenets throughout 
Israel. 

It is here necessary to demonstrate, that Jesus did not 
at first, clearly formulate his claim to divinity. He 
‘evinced some hesitation to impair to that extent mosaic 
monotheism, for he was well aware that he would in- 
evitably arouse the opposition and the zeal of all the 
Jewish laity, and incur the condemnation.of the guard- 
ians of Israel’s law. He indirectly claimed the qualities 
and the power attributed by the Hebrew faith, to God 
alone. The excitement of the people, on witnessing acts 
and hearing words, which involved a direct attack on 
the allessential principles of the religion of Sinai, indi- 
cated sufficiently how powerful would be the opposition 
and the obstacles which such a claim would inevitably 
encounter. 

Jesus therefore, did not at first announce positively 
that he was God; but he pretended to put away sin, 
a function which the doctrine of Israel held to be one 
of the most sacred attributes of the Eternal. He said to 
a person affected with paralysis, who came to him at 
Capernaum to be healed, “ My son, thy sins are forgiven 
thee.’”’* Another day, when he was dining at the house 
of a Pharisee, a woman who was a sinner, came into the 
house having a vase filled with oil of myrrh in her hand. 
Kneeling at his feet, she bathed them with her tears, 
dried them with her hair, kissed them and anointed them 
with perfume. And he said, Her sins, which are many, 
are forgiven, for she loved much. Adding to this prv- 
mise, of somewhat doubtful morality, its immediate ful- 
filment, he said unto her, “Thy sins are forgiven.’’t 

These words shocked those who heard them, and they 
added, Who is he that forgiveth sins also? It is a blas- 





* Quorum fidem vidit et dixit: Homo, remittuntur tibi pec- 
cata tua. Luke.v. 20; Mark ii. 5. 
+ Luke vi. 47, 48. 


THE DEICIDES. vy, 


phemy. Who can forgive, but God alone? (Luke vii. 
49; V. 21.) 

In fact, according to the faith of Israel it was blasphe- 
my. The Jewish law, in accordance with universal rea- 
son, did not admit that there could be mediators between 
God and man, in relation to eternal justice; it did not 
admit that a simple mortal could either absolve from 
sin, or punish the violation of the divine law. God alone, 
who soundeth the heart and the reins, God alone, whose 
justice is unfailing, can grant pardon to a repentant sin- 
ner. Such is the incontestable doctrine of Judaism, in 
which at no period, and under no form, can it be found, 
that the right pertains even to the High Priest, defini- 
tively to pardon human wrong-doing. 


The Gospel texts above quoted show that, even at 


the time of Jesus, this doctrine had lost nothing of its 
authority. 


“~~ 


II. 


To claim the power of absolving from sin was virtually 
on the part of Jesus an indirect declaration of divinity; 
but ere long his statement became more explicit. He 
said, “‘I am the hiving bread which came down from 
heaven.’* ‘This is the will of Him who sent me, that 
everyone that seeth the son and believeth on him, may 
have everlasting life.+ ‘Iwill raise him up atthe last 
day.’{ ‘Asthe Father raiseth up the dead and quick- 





* Et ego sum panis vivus qui de ecelo descendi. John vi. 
51.—Quia descendi de cello. Ibid. 38. 

+ Hec autem est voluntas Patris mei qui misit me, ut omnis 
qui videt filium et credit in eum nabeat vitam zternam. John 
vi. 40. 

¢ Et ego resuscitabo eum in noyissimo die. John vi. 39, 
40, and 44, | 


72 THE DEICIDES. 


eneth them, so the son quickeneth whom he will.’* ‘All 
that the Father doeth, so doeth the’son likewise.’t ‘For 
as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to 
the son, to have life in himself.’t «I and my Father are 
one.’§ ‘Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified 
and sent unto the world, Thou blasphemest, because I 
said, J am the Son of God?” 
The Evangelist John, while citing all these significant 
- discourses, which did not allow the Jews to have any 
doubt of the divine character to which Jesus laid claim, 
admits that they excited the greatest indignation in the 
chiefs and the people. The masses, by whom such will- 
ingness had been evinced to welcome him as a prophet, 
and who would even have accepted him as the Messiah, 
son of David, had he deigned to furnish proofs of a mes- 
sianic mission, these very masses were excited to fury 
against him, when by proclaiming himself the son of 
-God and God Himself, he destroyed the very basis of 
the doctrine of the ABSOLU#@E UNITY of the Jewish faith. 





* Sicut enim Pater suscitat mortuos et vivificat, sic et Filius 
quos vult, vivificat. John v, 21. 

+ Quzecumque enim fecerit Pater, hec et Filius similiter 
facit. John v. 19. 

¢ Sicut enim Pater habet vitam in semetipso, sic dedit et Fi- 
lio habere vitam in semetipso. John v. 26. 

§ St. John x. 30. On this point also the disciples whom we 
have already surprised several times in the criminal act of 
doubt, were far from having perfect faith. One of them, Phi- 
lip, said to Jesus, ‘Master, show us the Father and that will 
suffice us.” Jesus saith unto him, “Have I been so long time 
with thee, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He who 
hath seen me, hath seen also the Father, and how sayest thou 
then, ‘Show us the Father.” Believest thou not that Iam in 
the Father and the Father in me?” (Non creditis quia ego in 
Patre et Pater in me est?) John xiv. 8 and following. 

“| Quem Pater sanctificavit et misit in mundum, vos dicitis: 
Quia blasphemat, quia dixit: Filius Deisum? John x, 36. 


THE DEICIDES. 73 


Thus, when he one day publicly declared that the 
Father and the son were onc and the same being, the 
Jews took up stones to stone him. Jesus answered them, 
“Many good works have J shown you from my Father; 
for which of these works, do ye stone me?” The Jews 
answered him, saying, ‘‘ For a good work we stone thee 
not, but for blasphemy, and because that thou, beng a 
man, makest thyself God.” (John x. 31.) | 

On another occasion, on which he had publicly vio- 
lated the law of rest on the Sabbath, the Evangelist him- 
self says that, the Jews sought the more to kill him, 
because he not only had broken the Sabbath, but had 
also said, that God was his Father, making himself egual 
to God. And when he declared, as in the above, that 4e 
had come down from Heaven, the people murmured at 
him, and said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph 
whose Father and Mother we know? How then can he 
have come from Heaven?t 

If we read the strange and unintelligible discourses by 
which Jesus replied to the murmurs and the irritation of 
public opinion, we must admit they were not such as 
could produce conviction in the minds of his audience. 
Thus, his disciples themselves shared in the general 
sentiment, and protested in their turn against the divine 
nature that the master imputed to himself. Jesus, says 
the Gospel, knowing that his disciples murmured on this 
head, said to them, “Does this offend you? But there 
are some of you, who believe not.” And in fact several 





* Propterea ergo magis quezrebant eum Judzi interficere, 
quia non solum solvebat sabbatum, sed et Patrem suum dice- 
bat Deum, zqualem se faciens Deo. John v. 15. 

+ Murmurabant ergo Judzi de illo, quia dixisset: Ego sum 
panis vivus qui de ccelo descendi. Et dicebant: Nonne hic 
est Jesus filius Joseph, cujus nos novimus patrem et matrem? 
Quomodo ergo dicit hic: quia de ccelo descendi? John vi. 
41, 42, 


te THE DEICIDES. 


of his disciples, after that departed from him and walked 
no more with him.t He therefore remained with the 
twelve apostles, to whom he said on this occasion, “Will 
ye also go away?” But Peter replied, ‘Lord, to whom 
shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life, and 
we believe and we are sure that thou art the son of the 
living God.’’t 

Thus, as soon as Jesus openly declared that God was 
his Father and blended himself with the Eternal, the 
people who had previously testified so much sympathy 
for, now turned against, the prophet of Galilee, The 
greater number of his disciples abandoned him; the 
twelve only remained with him, and even one of those 
subsequently betrayed, and another denied him. ‘ 

The apostles themselves said to him, “Lord, how is 
it, that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, but not unto 
the world?’§ Finally, the Hebrews becoming more and 
more uncertain, replied to those who proposed to them 
to adopt the doctrine of Jesus, “We are the disciples of 





* It is impossible to multiply quotations on this head. We 
refer our readers to the fifth, sixth, and following chapters of 
the Gospel vof St. John which we publish in the Appendix. 
It will there be seen from the words of Jesus and from the 
observations of the people whom he addressed that not only 
was he not understood, but that to understand him was really 
impossible. 

+ Sciens autem Jesus apud semetipsum quia murmurarent 
de hoc discipuli ejus, dixit eis: Hoc vos scandalizat? sunt 
quidam ex vobis qui non credunt. Ex hox multi discipulo- 
rum ejus abierunt retro et jam non cum illo ambulabant. 
John vi. 62 and following. 

+ Dixit ergo Jesus ad duodecim: Numquid et vos vultis 
abire? Respondit ergo ei Simon Petrus: Domine ad quem 
ibimus? Et nos credimus et cognovimus quia tu es Christus, 
Filius Dei. John ibid, 68 and following. 

§ John xiv. 22. 


THE DEICIDES. 75 


Moses ; we know that God spake unto Moses, but as for 
this man, we know not who he is, or whence he comes.’ - 

We will here briefly examine the cause of this repro- 
bation and the reason why the Jews refused to acknowl- 
edge a God in the son of Mary. 


III. 
THE essential basis and foundation of Judaism, is the 
‘Unity and invisibility of God. Hear O Israel, exclaims 
our legislator, the Eternal our Lord, the Eternal is One.t 
The object of humanity, the triumph of the chosen 
people, the sign of the messianic epoch consist essen- 
tially, according to the prophets, in the recognition and 
proclamation of the Unity of God. ON THAT DAY, said 
Zechariah, THE LORD SHALL BE ONE AND HIS NAME 
ONE.{ It is useless to enquire if this. doctrine of the 
divine Unity, so simple, so sublime, so accessible to hu- 
man reason, is consistent with the hypostatical theory 
of Plato, or with a trinity, at the same time one and mul- 
tiplicate, according to the definite formula of catholi- 
cism. We are here writing history and not religious 
dogma. We do not discuss the truth or the fallacy of 
the Christian Trinity. We seek only to verify the fact 
that in accordance with the. Bible and all historical 
teaching, the Jews prior to, and after the age of Jesus, 
have ever proclaimed the UNITY OF GOD in the strictest 
sense of the word. Neither in their books, nor in their 
traditions is there to be found the slightest trace, either 
of a different belief, or of the faintest philosophical or 
religious compromise of this elementary principle. Thus 
then, the Hebrews adored the One only God, and they 





* Maledixerunt ergo ei et dixerunt: Tu discipulus illius sis; 
nos autem Moysi discipuli sumus. Nos scimus quia Moysi 
locutus est Deus: hunc autem nescimus unde sit. John ix. 
28, 29. 

+ Deuteronomy vi. 4. ¢ Zechariah xiv. 9. 


76 THE DEICIDES. 


were convinced that all men, at the period fixed by the 
mysterious decrees of Providence, will render, as they 
did, adoration unto that One alone. 

Further, they believed that this God is a pure spirit, 
who neither manifested Himself, nor could be seen under 
a material form. Moses, the well beloved prophet, he ~ 
by whom the Eternal condescended to make himself 
heard, not seen, Moses himself had in vain besought 
God to shew him all His glory. “No,” answered the 
Creator of Heaven and Earth, ‘“‘thou canst not see my 
face, for no man can see me and live.’* Again, when 
the inspired legislator repeated to the people of Israel 
before departing from among them, the fundamental 
principles of the law, he said to them; ‘And the Lord 
spake unto you out of the midst of the fire. Ye heard 
the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye 
heard a voice. Take ye therefore good heed to your- 
selves, for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day 
the Lord spake unto you in Horeb, out of the midst of 
the fire.”’t It is for this end, that in this Decalogue, . 
which. has become the code of all civilised peoples, and 
in fact throughout the Bible, the worship of images is so 
frequently interdicted, as well as the sacrilegious dedica- 
tion of statues to creatures of flesh and blood, of the — 
worship which is due to the Eternal alone.t 

Judaism did not accept the idea, that the Infinite can 
be restricted to a bodily form, or limited space; it did 
not admit God could divide Himself into several por- 
tions, one of which would appear to the eyes of mortals, 
while the others would remain ever invisible, ever in- 
finite, though separated in the heights of the heavens. 
The entire. Pentateuch testifies to the efforts made by 





* Exodus xxxiii. 20. + Deuteronomy iv. 12, 15. 
¢t Exodus xx. 4, 5. Deuteronomy v. 8,9. Ibid. vi. 16 and 
following. 


THE DEICIDES. 7 


Moses, to instill immutably into the minds of his people 
the grand and comprehensive doctrine of the Unity and 
Invisibility of God. All the prophets recalled the Israel- 
ites to this fundamental dogma whenever they betrayed 
the Jeast tendency to forsake it; and never were their > 
utterances more beautiful and more touching, than when 
they fulminated against pagan idolatry and polytheism. 

Such was, in fact, the tradition of Israel from their 
earliest origin. The vocation of Abraham was but the 
declaration of the Unity and Immateriality of God, the 
solemn condemnation by the great patriarch of the wor- 
ship of idols. Contemporaneously with and before the 
time of Jesus Christ, there existed several sects in Juda- 
ism; but Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenees, Samaritans, 
etc., all professed the same belief on this point, and not 
the slightest difference or disagreement ever arose in 
Israel as to the nature and the attributes of the Eternal. 
The short and magnificent profession of faith above 
quoted, “HEAR, O ISRAEL, THE ETERNAL OUR GOD, 
THE ETERNAL IS ONE, was then, as it is now, the Israel- 
ite’s most sacred prayer, one which it was incumbent on 
him to repeat morning and evening, which he was per- 
mitted to pronounce even in a profane tongue, in order 
that he might thoroughly comprehend its sense and es 
significance. 

ONE ONLY GOD immaterial, infinite, invisible, who 
even when communicating His will directly to mortal 
man, caused him to hear a supernatural voice, but did 
not reveal Himself in any material form; such were at 
the period of which we treat—after eighteen hundred 
years, such are now—the dogma and the faith of the 
Hebrew people. : 


IV. 
WuatT this people had previously suffered, what it has 


endured since that epoch, forthe préservation and the 
defence of this Unitarian principle, is unspeakable. 


6 


78 THE DEICIDES, 


That people has ever easily submitted politically to 
every rule imposed upon it; it yielded without much 
murmuring to the Babylonian captivity, to the sover- 
eignty of Greece, to the yoke of the Romans, then mast- 
ers of the world; but Jet the sacred treasury of its reli- 
gious belief be attacked, it at once faces defeat and death 
with entire indifference. 

Judea might have been transformed into a Roman 
province, Jerusalem into a vassal of Rome; but on the 
one condition, that the Temple remained in all its pris- 
tine purity, and that the law of the Unity should be un- 
polluted. . There was not a Jew, at that period, who 
would not have preferred martyrdom and death, to the 
violation of his religious faith. History is replete with 
striking examples which irrefutably prove the uncon- 
querable ardour of this sentiment in all classes of Jewish 
society, men, women and even children. 

During the first period of their social existence, the 
Hebrew people had frequent backslidings; the unitarian 
idea slowly developed, but had not yet attained to that 
strength and energy in the minds of the chosen people 
which would have -rendered it proof against the efforts 
of contemporaneous idolatries. The sons of Israel were 
still attracted by strange gods. The nation needed to 
struggle at that period of formation and development, 
against Pagan tendencies ; and it was necessary to en- 
deavour to combat their moral weakness. The prophets, 
those valiant popular tribunes undertook this noble mis- 
sion; moved by the enthusiasm of their faith, they op- 
posed chiefs and citizens, prevaricating priests and im- 
pious kings; theirs was the lofty voice which rallied 
deserters and which, amidst idolatrous darkness, held 
aloft the torch of Sinai, the eternal light of monotheism, 
the divine law of Jehovah. © 

But after the destruction of the first temple, hesitation 
and apostasy were at an end in Israel. Monotheism had 
taken entire hold of the national mind, and the people 


THE DEICIDES. me 


were wholly devoted to the Unitarian faith. By it and 
for it alone they lived. To preserve it pure from all con- 
tact, from all strange and deteriorating influences, was 
its absorbing thought. To defend it against all attacks, 
was then and for ever its glorious mission. 

All the phases of its second political existence, after 
the Babylonian captivity, are marked with the impress 
of this one only sentiment. 

The religious idea alone inspired the heroism of the 
Maccabees; their aim was less to free Judea from Syrian 
domination, than to purify the Tempel from the idols 
which there profaned the majesty of Jehovah. The 
conquerors of Israel had resolved to annihilate the Jewish 
religion, and to forbid its worship. Nothing more was 
needed to arouse the anger of the lion of Judah, and to 


_excite that glorious Asmonean insurrection which fora 


time secured naiional independence. 

At a period nearly coincident with the triumphs of the 
Maccabees, Alexander the Great, pursuing his dream of 
universal empire, appeared before the walls of Jerusa- 
lem. By achance rare in the history of the conquerors 
of antiquity, he evinced great kindness to the van- 
quished, and promised the Jews to grant what they asked. 
They sought neither political independence, nor exemp- 
tion from tribute, they asked but for this, for the right 
of freely and uninterruptedly following the religion of 
the One and Only God, and this favor being granted 
them was regarded by them as so important an event, 
that they made it the foundation of a newera from which 
all subsequent DOCUMENTS WERE DATED. Thus, after 
the return from the Babylonian captivity, the true 
country of the Israelite was the Temple, his true-banner 
the Unity of God. 

The more Israel felt itself to be menaced by the rising 
torrent of heathen invasion, the greater was its resist- 
ance. Its heroism and devotion grew with the danger 
to which the monotheistic faith was exposed, that faith 


80 THE DEICIDES. 


to be ever after in conflict with the polytheism which 
ruled over the whole earth. 


And marvellous is the result ! this belief, the essence 
and the strength of Judaism, assumed under the influ- 
ence of the struggle which Judea maintained with all its 
external enemies, a character of astounding grandeur. 
At the moment of losing its political fatherland, the 
Jewish people, widening to the most distant horizons 
the future of its destiny, attained to the profound and 
irresistible conviction, that all the peoples of the 
earth will one day accept the law and the doctrine of the 
Unity, and that Israel is the High Priest of humanity, 
to whom is confided the charge of preserving intact for 
all nations, the treasury of immortal truths. 


This was no new hope in the traditions of the Jewish 
people. It had been said unto Abraham, “that in him 
all the families of the earth should be blessed.’’ Moses 
had predicted to the Hebrews, that on the day fixed by © 
the secret decrees of Providence, all peoples would pro- 
claim the Unity of God, and the truth of His law; all 
the prophets had announced the triumph of monothe- ~ 
ism, after ages of trial, of disasters, and of persecution. 
But at the period to which we are now referring, this 
idea had assumed extraordinary proportions. Israel 
considered himself as the nation of the Messiah, the 
future Apostle of humanity. The law will no longer be 
the exclusive heritage of the house of Jacob, but will 
become the portion of all mankind. 


All the historical monuments of that age prove this 
mental condition, and the incredible ardor which it im- 
parted:to the patriotism and spirit of the nation. 


Eighteen centuries of misery, of persecution and of 
martyrdom have failed to weaken this sentiment. The 
Jews have braved the stake and the scaffold, the hatred 
of kings and peoples, in order to preserve in entire 
purity the absolute principle of the Unity of God, whence 


THE DEICIDES. 81 


proceed the unity and fraternity of the human race, the 
unity of law, moral and social. 


aif 


AT the moment when faith in the future of monotheism 
and resistance to all that could influence that future, - 
had become the most enthusiastic, Jesus suddenly ap- 
_ peared, and by declaring himself the son of God, and 
the equal of God, greatly disturbed the unitarian belief 
of his contemporaries. 

This was not only, as we have observed above, a direct 
violation of the laws of Moses, and of the great revela- 
tion of Sinai; it was also the ruin of the hopes of the 
Jewish people; it was a striking contradiction of the © 
world-wide mission which it had assumed. 

The astonishment and the indignation with which the 
Jews who were contemporaries of Jesus were filled, when 
they heard him first arrogate to himself the prerogatives 
which could belong only to God, and soon after pretend 
to a divine origin and nature, may be easily understood. 
For those thoroughly imbued with that Jewish law, in 
which it had been said, Ye shall neither add thereto, nor 
diminish therefrom, could but regard these claims as 
blasphemy meriting condign punishment. In fact, in the 
Gospel narrative above quoted, we find that Jesus is 
reproached by them for blaspheming in pretending to be 
God and declaring himself the equal of God, when he 
was but a simple mortal. 

It is undeniable that by the proclamation of his divinity, 
Jesus not only opposed the secular belief of the Jewish 
people, disturbed all consciences, and denied all received 
truths, but he also committed a flagrant attack on that 
law, which he at first solemnly declared he came not to 
destroy or to modify. It was virtually preaching a new 
God, or at any rate, a new system concerning a divinity, 
a God, or a system, which neither the Jews of his time, 


82 THE DEICIDES. 


nor their fathers had known. Certain miracles would 
have corroborated in vain this fundamental innovation, 
this revolution in the belief in One God; the mosaic law 
and the national conscience alike unhesitatingly con- 
demned such an attempt. 

The following is in reality the unimpeachable text, on 
which those who prosecuted Jesus and those who, ac- 
cording to the Gospel of St. John, cast stones at him 
because he declared himself to be God, based their de- 
fence :— 

“Tf there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of 
dreams and giveth thee a sign or wonder, and it come 
to pass, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou 
hast not known, and let us serve them, thou shalt not 
hearken unto the words of that prophet. Ye shall walk 
after the Lord your God, and fear Him and cleave unto 
Him; and that prophet shall be put to death, because 
he hath spoken to you, to turn you away from the Lord 
your God.’’* 

It is dificult to be more precise than is the sacred law- 
giver in the preceding commandment. He ordains that 
nothing shall impair, nothing shall destroy that doctrine 
of divine Unity, on which he has based the whole system 
of the law of Israel and of the future of the entire human 
race. Inasmuch as he commanded the extermination of 
the idolatrous nations inhabiting the promised land, in 
order that the belief in the Unity might not be sup- 
pressed at its birth, by contact with, and the example 
of, Pagan customs, so he condemned to the extreme 
penalty of the law any man, even were hea prophet, 
who announced and who preached a God other than 
Him who had spoken to the Hebrews amidst lightning 
and thunder, on the Mount Horeb. 

This principle acted as powerfully at the time of Jesus, 
as during the first days of Jewish nationality. In fact 





* Deuteronomy xiii. I to 5. 


THE DEICIDES. 83 


from the Gospel narrative itself, it is evident that the 
Jewish people did not hesitate; no sooner had they 
heard from the son of Mary a word which involved a 
pretension to divinity, than a multitude took up stones 
and sought to stone, in obedience to the precepts of 
Moses, him whom they regarded as a blasphemer. “We 
will stone thee for thy blasphemy,” exclaimed the as- 
sembled Jews, “because being a man thou makest thy- 
self a God.’’* 

“Because being a man thou wouldst make thyself 
God!” An awful reproach, for it confirms the fact that 
Jesus had not given to the people any proof of his divinity. 
He had taken so little trouble to convince the masses, 
that as we have seen, his disciples themselves abandoned 
him, and separated themselves from him, as soon as by 
declaring himself the son and the equal of God, he in- 
fringed the sacred doctrine of the absolute Unity and 
immateriality of the Godhead. He God, cried the people, 
was not Joseph his father? Was not Mary his mother? 
And thus on all sides arose a violent protest against 
him. 

That a God who had descended on the earth, incarn- 
ated in a human body, to manifest himself to the world 
and ensure the salvation and the triumph of Israel, 
could not, or would not reveal himself more clearly, 
that he left all his contemporaries in doubt and hesita- 
tion, that he did not shine forth in all his glory and 
power, by one of those great manifestations that at once 
command belief, is a mystery which we here can neither 
penetrate, norcomprehend. It doubtless formed a por- 
tion of Jesus’s design, not to be more explicit; but once 
more we ask, can the Jewish people be blamed for not 
having seen what was not shown unto them, and for 





* Responderunt et Judzi: De bono opere non lapidamus 
te, sed de blasphemia, et quia tu, homo cum sis, facis te ipsum 
Deum. John x. 33. 


84 THE DEICIDES. 


having obeyed their law of religion, by pursuing and 
condemning him who based his divinity on his own 
affirmation alone? 

Let us recollect that splendid revelation at Sinai, 
where the disorder of the elements was but an accom- 
paniment of the divine manifestation, in the presence of 
a whole nation, struck with fear and awe; let us remem- 
ber that supernatural voice, resounding amidst wind and 
storm, and conveying to the ears of the Hebrews, those 
immortal truths, which are destined one day to illumine 
all the nations of the earth. Science may explain these 
miracles; but the immense effect produced by them on — 
the Israelites, cannot be contested, an effect that noth- 
ing in the course of ages has impaired or weakened. 
Was the like observable in the time of Jesus? Was any 
act of his life marked by so universal and so startling a 
revelation? All that has been previously advanced 
presents the answer to this enquiry. 


VI. 


THE solitude around Jesus became daily more entire; 
the Apostles only, though disquieted themselves by 
singular doubts, remained faithful to their master and 
his new docirine. But the entire people, who had hailed 
his first utterances with such lively sympathy, had now 
unanimously turned against him. No one in Judea 
could resolve to see a God in acreated being, one ap- 
parently having the same nature as the rest of mankind, 
born of woman, living, eating, and drinking, as a simple 
mortal, subject to all the conditions and to all the suf- © 
ferings of humanity, known by allas the son of a humble 
carpenter of Galilee, whose mother, brothers, and sisters, 
simple and pious people, in no way claimed for their 
family, any of the glory and power of the Eternal. The 
Jews at length discovered that his own parents and the 
majority of his disciples themselves did not believe in 


THE DEICIDES. 85 


the mission of Jesus, far less in his divinity; how then 
was it possible, under these various circumstances, that 
conviction favourable to the son of Mary, could take 
possession of the national mind? 

But strange and more characteristic were the excessive 
long-suffering and forbearance, the unconquerable pa- 
tience, one might almost call it feebleness, with which 
Jesus endured not only the general incredulity of which 
he was the object, but also the violence, the obloquy 
and the blows, with which his most significant actions 
were received. We have seen, that every time a claim 
to divinity fell from his lips, the Jews protested against 
what they called his blasphemy, and even took up stones 
with which to kill him who made so serious an attack 
on the faith of Israel. Then, or never, was the time for 
Jesus to put forth his power, and to arrest by a striking . 
miracle, (since he had the gift of working them,) the 
efforts of those who assailed him and sought his des- 
truction. 

When the inhabitants of Sodom attempted to fale viol- 
ence to the messenger of the Lord, and to invade the © 
hospitable dwelling of Lot, the angels stretched forth 
their hands‘and struck the people blind; and soon after, 
the fire of Heaven, mingling with the volcanic eruptions 
of the earth, destroyed and burnt the town and infamous 
inhabitants. In the desert, when Israel rebelled against 
the voice of God, or lost faith in His holy promises, fear- 
ful chastisements, ministers of eternal justice, visited 
the guilty people, and the Hebrews seized with terror 
immediately returned to their abvEHnDe to the law and 
the will of God. . 

Nothing of a like character marked the earthly life of 
Jesus.. In vain was he asked for proofs; in vain the 
people clamoured against him, and in anger proceeded 
from scepticism to violence, no retributive sign appeared 
in Heaven, no Sudden and supernatural chastisement 
overtook those who dared to repudiate and stone a God. 


86 THE DEICIDES. 


Jesus escaped from the ire of the people; he fled to Ga- 
lilee when the populace threatened to precipitate him 
from the summit of a steep mountain, he fled to the 
desert, when Herod had him pursued, to put him to 
death! again he fled, when the plot failed of which the 
object was to proclaim him king; and once more he fled, 
when the Jews stoned him, to punish him for having 
proclaimed himself God.* This system was doubtless 
pre-arranged by him; it formed a part of his design to 
refuse the Hebrew people evidences of his divinity, and 
to exclude that chosen race from the new alliance which 
he pretended to have brought to earth, and of which 
nevertheless, they had been the destined heirs since 
the glorious day of Sinai. 

We can only deplore the blindness and the ignorance 
in which Jesus allowed the Jews to remain, when it 
would have been so easy for him to effect their con- 
viction. 





* Querebant ergo eum apprehendere: exivit de manibus 
eorum, et adivi¢ iterum trans Jordanem, in eum locum ubi erat 
Joanne baptizans primum, et mansit illic—John x. 39, 40. 


~ 


THE DEICIDES. : 87. 


SEVENTH BOOK. 


Conception of the kingdom of God—Apocalyptic traditions 
respecting the advent of the divine reign—Character of the 
predictions of Jesus on this point—The kingdom of God 
according to the doctrines of Judaism, from the human and 
supernatural points of view—Superiority of the Jewish doc- 
trine to that of the Gospel. 


I, 


WHEN Jesus had reached the exact formula of Messianic 
aspiration, his grand conception was the realisation of 
the kingdom of God. In the extremely spiritualised 
development of the Christian doctrine, this idea was 
made the basis of the new faith, as well as the highest 
and most glorious title of Christianity, in the eyes of the 
human race. The reign of God, according to modern 
interpreters of the Gospel, is the triumph of the prin- 
ciples of justice, love and truth, the complete submission 
of man to that divine law, which teaches us to love our 
neighbours as ourselves, and to see in all human beings 
only brothers, children of the One Father, the advent of 
peace and fraternity among all the nations of the earth, 
in one word, according to the beautiful utterances of the 
prophets, when hearts of flesh shall replace hearts of 
stone. 

But this was not the idea either of Jesus, or of the 
Apostles, They represt:nted the kingdom of God under 
avery different aspect ; according to them, the advent 
of the days of Messiah could not be separated from that 
of the end of the world and the last judgment. 

The Gospel leaves no doubt as to this interpretation. 


oe THE DEICIDES. 


Sometimes, it is true, when Jesus was in the presence of 
the doctors of the Pharisees, he apparently set forth that 
the reign of God will come without any physical mani- 
festation,* and that from that moment he would be 
among them; but the true Messianic doctrine of the son 
of Mary must not be sought in these evasive answers, 
which are under arother form, but a fresh refusal of ex- 
planation and proofs. When alone with his disciples, 
when he unreservedly revealed to them all that was in 
his heart, he was much more explicit, and his repeated 
declarations inspired them with a wholly different belief 
concerning the advent of the reign of God. This belief 
rests incontestably on certain mystic ideas which had 
long previously been current in Judea. 

The books of Daniel and Esdras have preserved for 
_ us its memory and its formula. It was believed that 
great convulsions and awful phenomena would precede 
and announce the reign of the Saints, or as Daniel terms 
it, “Then the Eternal will appear among the clouds to 
judge the living and the dead.” 

When Jesus’s claim to the Messianic character was 
complete, he did not hesitate to apply to himself those 
apocalyptic traditions which were calculated to act power- 
fully on the public mind by the combined influence of 
wonder and fear. 


4 


II. 


The importance of the declaration of Jesus on this 
subject, is enhanced by the fact that it was to his dis- 
ciples alone in his most intimate outpourings he taught 
the whole of his doctrine, and defined the signal facts 
which would characterise the divine reign. The picture 
that the prophet of Galilee traces of the messianic epock, 
resembles in fact almost line for line, the one that had 





* Luke xvii. 20, 


THE DEICIDES. : 89 


been painted by the mystics of Judea. Matthew and 
Mark agreeing entirely on this head, record his words 
as follows :—‘‘And there will be at that time fearful cal- 
amities, war, pestilence, famine, earthquakes, the abo- 
mination of desolation throughout the world.” All the 
mystic terrors announced by Daniel and repeated liter- 
ally in the gospel narrative, will be realised and the days 
will be accomplished. For, as the lightning cometh out 
of the east and shineth even unto the west, so shall the 
coming of the son of man be. In those days shall the 
sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, 
and the stars shall fall from Heaven, and then shall ap- 
pear the sign of the son of man in Heaven, and then 
shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see 
the son of man coming in the clouds of Heaven with 
power and great glory. And he shall send his angels 
with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather 
together his elect from the four winds, from one end of 
Heaven to the other. When the son of man shall come 
in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall 
he sit upon the throne of his glory. And before him 
shall be gathered all nations, and he shall separate them — 
one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from 
the goats, and he shall set the sheep on his right hand 
and the goats on his left. Then shall the King say unto 
them on his right hand, ‘Come, ye blessed of my Father, 
inherit the kingdom prepared for you, from the forma- 
tion of the world.’ Then shall he say unto them on his 
left hand, “ Depart from me ye cursed, into everlasting 
fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: And these 
shall go away into everlasting Gre rt lh but the 
rig htewae into life eternal.* 





* Matt, xxv. 31 and following. 


9° THE DEICIDES. 


III. 


THE prophecies respecting the kingdom of God possess 
no great novelty of expression. They are almost all 
copied from the Jewish Apocalyptics; the Apocalypse of 
John especially has drawn still more extensively on the 
book of Daniel. 

Neither is there the least doubt as to the character 
which Jesus and his Apostles attributed to this fearful 
epoch. All the declarations of the master of the Gospel 
were accepted in their most literal sense. Jesus an- 
nounced the end of the world by also declaring himself 
to be the Messiah predestined to judge the living and 
the dead. The New Testament teems with declarations 
and parables which announce this great event to be at 
hand ; in one passage, the master even assures his listen- 
ers, ‘‘ Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not 
pass away, until all these things shall come to an end.’”* 

Besides, if it was allowable, in opposition to the evi- 
dence given by the texts, to attribute a mysterious and 
symbolical sense to the promises of Jesus, it is undeni- 
able that neither the disciples, nor the earliest church 
accepted this interpretation. : 

As we have said above, his twelve apostles frequently 
enquired of him, “Will all this happen in our days, 
master?’t After his death, they were in daily expecta- 
tion of his second advent. The Apocalypse of John, 
which is but a prophetic development of the messianic 
idea of Jesus, fixes the year 71 of the new era, as that of 
the coming of the kingdom of Heaven; and this expec- 
tation was universally diffused in the earliest Christian 
period. When a mortal blow had been given later, as 
years rolled on, to these first hopes, the fulfilment of the 
prophecies of Christ was assumed to be postponed for 





* Matthew xxiii. 36; Mark xiii. 30. 
+ See in reference in page 72 the texts quoted. 


THE DEICIDES. 91 


a thousand years. The millennium found favour and 
acceptance in the church, and the historians of the age 
testify to the universal excitement prevailing throughout 
the Christian world, at the approach of this awful date 
of the year 1,000, which according to Christian tradition, 
was to be the herald of the last days of the human race 
on earth. 


IV. 


ALL those fatal years, anxiously expected and dreaded 
at one and the same time, have sunk successively into 
the bosom of time. The sign of the son of-man has not 
shone forth in the heavens; the promised Messiah has 
not appeared in the skies, amid the war of the elements, 
as in the days of Sinaic revelation; the dead have re- 
mained extended in their sepulchres, and the earth still 
awaits the awful moment of the last judgment. 

But though these material signs have not been accom- 
plished, humanity has nevertheless pursued its onward 
march towards the ideal of. justice and of truth which 
dwelleth in God. A new moral world has succeeded to 
the ancient world, and Christianity, as we shall presently 
show, has played a vast and providential part in this re- 
novation of pagan society. The kingdom of God ap- 
proaches each day to its fulfilment, or rather the peoples 
march towards that kingdom, by means of the progress, 
liberty, and development of the sacred principles of 
universal morality, which is a splendid manifestation of 
the divinity present in the mind of man, and in the 
movements of the whole human race. 


Vv. 


Let us further ascertain the sort of influence that the 
ideas of Jesus regarding the characteristics of the mes- 
sianic era and the signs announcing it, exerted on his 


92 THE DEICIDES. 


contemporaries, if, and this is doubtful, those ideas were 
known to thein. 

They could have served but to confirm the incredulity 
and the mistrust with which the new prophet had pre- 
viously inspired the Jews. As, in declaring himself the 
equal of God, he had attacked their unitarian belief, so 
in uttering his messianic predictions, he had impugned 
all their traditions; and herein he professed, as we can 
demonstrate, a far less generous, a far less liberal, and 
above all, a far less civilising doctrine than that held by 
the prophets of Israel and the fathers of the Synagogue. 

The principal point in which Jesus swerved from the 
Jewish teachings on this important question was this: 
“The kingdom of God,” said he, “was not of this world,” 
and thus, by a logical sequence, he came to deny the 
-advent of the kingdom of Heaven at the end of time. 

Such was not the Jewish belief. Neither the Penta- 
teuch nor the Bible contains a word which admits even 
of the supposition, that a day will come when a purely 
celestial and spiritual empire will replace this earthly 
and material globe. The doctrine to be evolved from all 
the ideas of the great Hebrew legislator is, that the king- 
dom of God is of this world, where Eternal providence 
is unceasingly active, everywhere present, everywhere 
vigilant everywhere helpful. Man’ bears about with 
him, in his soul and in his conscience, the divine ideal, 
for he is himself created in the image of God, and the 
whole aim of his being should consist in this, to make 
his will conform to that of his divine model. He shall 
be holy, for God is holy; he shall be just, for God is just; 
he shall be good and merciful, for the mercy of God is 
infinite. But to elevate himself towards God, he has 
only to.appeal to his intelligence, and his reason. ‘“ For 
this commandment which I command thee this day, is 
not hidden from thee, neither is it far off; it is not in 
Heaven that thou shouldest say, who shall go up unto 
Heaven and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and 


THE DEICIDES. oo ae 


doit? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest 
say, who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto 
us, that we may hear it, and do it? But the word is very 
nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou 
mayest doit. See, I have set before thee this wy, life 
and good, death and evil.’”* 

Such is the ever present doctrine of Judaism. Man, 
by virtue of his own efforts can raise himself towards his 
God; he needs neither mediator nor Messiah in order to 
win for himself a place in the kingdom of Heaven; he 
may ascend by his own endeavour alone, the steps of 
that mysterious ladder, of which the dream of Jacob is 
a magnificent symbol. | | 

With the messianic era as promised to Israel by Moses 
and all the prophets, nothing supernatural is combined. 
Its first element is the redemption and the triumph of 
the chosen people when relieved from their trials, their 
national authority and their sovereign independence are 
re-established; but its other and most significant feature 
is to be the felicity of the whole human race, when the 
nations shall not know war any more, and united by 
love, shall have but one love and faith,OneGod. Israel 
is the only people who associated with their own future, 
the future of all the other peoples of the world, and with 
the triumph of their principles, the triumph of the good, 
the true, the beautiful, in all countries, and under all 
climes.t 

The superiority of this noble doctrine to that of Jesus | 
is-clearly perceptible. When the son of Mary announced 
fearful calamities only, the Jews.expected on the con- 
trary a period of universal tranquillity and harmony. He 
foretold war, massacres, strife and discord among na- 





* Deuteronomy xxx. II—I5. 
+ We quoted at the commencement of this treatise, the pro- 
phetic texts to which we refer our readers, which trace the mag- 
nificent picture of the Messianic period. 


at 


94 THE DEICIDES. 


tions, and in the very hearts of families. The Jews, on 
the contrary, hoped that “the wolf would lie down with 
the lamb, and that swords would be turned into prun- 
ing-hooks.”” He painted the end of humanity amid the 
convulsions and throes of the elements, physical and 
moral; the Jews, on the contrary, described the golden 
age which pagan mythology placed at the opening of 
creation, as occurring at the last period of human-exist- 
ence, and they were convinced that ideas of justice and 
fraternity would, in the end, triumph over the passions 
and the weaknesses of humanity. 

““The Gospel of the kingdom”’ offered to the Jews as 
“good tidings,” was evidently, in this respect, whollv 
devoid of the beauty and grandeur of their traditional 
dogma, 


VI. 


YET, even in the traditions of the Synagogue, the advent 
of the reign of God was clothed partially in supernatural 
and legendary garments, and Daniel exercised an influ- 
ence on the Jewish mystics, analogous to that which he 
appears to have had on the mind of the Galilean re- 
former. 

In those marvellous narratives whence early Christi- 
anity and the editors of the gospels evidently drew many 
of their legends, the messianic era is also depicted as 
coeval with the end of ages. There exists a number of 
aggadoth* that were current in the schools of Judea, in 
which the signs which will precede and follow this 





* The Aggadoth were marvellous stories closely allied to 
gnosticism and cabbalacism, and forming a species of recrea- 
tion in the great Jewish academies and schools. The doctors 
of the Talmud generally expressed great contempt for these in- 
consistent tales; but even in them, lofty moral principles are 
frequently to be met with. 


THE DEICIDES. 95 


grandest of epochs, are minutely indicated. Let uscom- 
pare some of these with the predictions of the Gospels; 
we shall then perceive how far superior they are, ina 
moral and religious point of view, to the appalling teach- 
ings of Jesus upon the last judgment. 

In the Gospel, the son of man ascending to the throne 
of justice, is to separate, for eternity, the good from the 
bad; the first are to enjoy eternal bliss, the others are 
to be eternally damned. 

Thence has resulted the despairing doctrine in the 
Christian world, of eternal punishment, which has much 
relation to the Pagan doctrines of infernal chastisement, 
but which is so widely removed from the merciful prin- 
ciples of Judaism. The following, on the contrary, are 
the consolatory promises given in the legends of the 
synagogue :— 

“When the messianic age arrives,” says Talkut Jesaia,* 
“Amen will resound from gulf to gulf in the depths of 
the abyss, and all sinners undergoing punishment will 
be forgiven. 

“Then, the Eternal ascends His immortal throne. 
The heavenly hosts are before Him, the sun and the 
planets to His right, the moon and the stars to His left. 

“The divine voice is heard proclaiming the Messianic 
law. The prophet Zeroubabel rises and exclaims: ‘ May 
the name of the Lord be praised and sanctified.’ 

“These words are re-echoed from one extremity of 
the universe to the other, and all mortals answer: ‘Amen; 
and even the ungodly among the Hehrews, who are en- 
during punishment, and the Gentiles, who have not ex- 
piated their faults, reply, ‘Amen.’ 

“This Amen ascends from the depths to the celestial 
throne. And the Eternal saith: ‘These unhappy ones 





+ Talkut Isaia, p. 41, 1—I borrow these important quota- 


- tions from the beautiful collection of Jewish parables, which I 


have already mentioned, by Professor Joseph Levy. 


96 THE DEICIDES. 


‘have suffered enough; their sins were but the result of 
the temptations of the spirit of evil.’ Then the Eternal 
delivers the keys of the pit to the angels Michael and 
Gabriel, and celestial messengers depart on the wings of 
the wind. 

“ Thus the eight thousand doors of the infernal regions 
are immediately opened. As a friend raises from the 
earth a fallen friend, so the angels affectionately lead 
Jews and Gentiles; they wash them, purify them, heal 
their wounds, clothe them in spotless garments, and 
surrounded by legions of the blessed, conduct them to 
the presence of the Eternal. 

“They lead the Hebrews who, thus purified, become 
again like unto pious and holy men; they lead even the 
idolators who, in consequence of their justice, were as 
the priests of God on the earth. 

‘“‘And the Eternal saith: ‘Let them all draw near, and | 
contemplate My glory.’ 

“And all prostrate themselves before the immortal 
throne, and the voices of the blessed join in praising 
the Almighty.” ; 


VII. 


WE need not enlarge on the moral grandeur of this 
legend, one popular in Israel at the time even of the 
second temple. 

As in the domain of society, Israel does not separate 
the idea of his triumph and the advent of Messiah from 
the happiness of all other peoples, so in the domain of 
the supernatural, he does not divide the eternal beati- 
tude which he expects in a future state, from the equal 
beatitude of Gentiles andidolators. Infinite pardon will 
wipe out all faults, and sin will be no more. 

Thus, while the Gospel writes on the gates of the in- 
fernal regions, the terrible words of Dante, “ Hope not,” 
Israel inscribes thereon, ‘Hope and redemption for 
everyone.” 


THE DEICIDES. 97 


And this is not an isolated doctrine; it is truly the — 
belief of the whole Jewish people, even as it existed at 
the time when Jesus appeared. In all the traditions, 
and under all forms, traces and proofs of this fact abound. 

Ten things, exclaims the writer of the Raboth,* will 
distinguish the messianic times from ourtimes. ‘The 
light of the sun will be centuplicated, inexhaustible 
springs of water wil! flow from Jerusalem, and will prove 
sources of health and strength to all mankind; trees will 
bear fruit a thousand times more abundant ;—all terres- 
trial ruins will be repaired ;—Jerusalem will be rebuilt ; 
‘—peace will reign among the fiercest animals ;—harmony 
will be restored between Israel and all other peoples ;— 
groans and tears will cease throughout the world; — 
death will be swallowed up ;—joy will break forth uni- 
versally.”’ 

We read elsewhere. :-— 
“Three days before the great redemption of Israel, 
the prophet Elijah will appear on the mountains of the 
holy land, and will exclaim weeping, ‘ How long will the 

days of thy mourning endure ?’ 

“Then the first day he will proclaim with a loud voice, 
‘Peace comes to earth! Peace comes to earth!’ AND 
THE WICKED THEMSELVES will rejoice. 

“The second day he will exclaim, ‘ Happiness des- 
cends on earth! Happiness descends on earth! And 
the wicked themselves will thrill with joy. 

“The third day he will exclaim, ‘Salvation descends 
on earth! Salvation descends on earth! And the wicked 
themselves will be happy. 

«And Elijah will add, ‘This is the reign of thy God.’ ’’t 

Thus the advent of the Messiah and the inauguration 
of the kingdom of Heaven are for Israel the close of all 


es * 





* Another collection of Haggadoth, or Talmudic legends, 
page 131, Xi. 
t Talkout Isaiah, p. 53, xi. 


98 THE DEICIDES. 


suffering on earth, the annihilation of all coming evil. 
It is peace and harmony among men, eternal bliss in 
Heaven. 

_ The advent of this mysterious epoch, according to the 
Gospel, is to take place only amidst war, convulsions and 
raging pestilence; the eternal perdition of the bad is its 
result. 

According to the traditions of Israel, a revival of the 
golden age, of the original Eden, joy, redemption of 
the living and the dead, unlimited pardon, and eternal 
happiness are its features. 

The gloomy doctrine of Jesus on this point, was not 
only opposed to all the hopes of the Synagogue, but it 
involved intolerance and despair, while the Jewish doc- 
trine was toleration and love. 

Thus it will be easily understood that far from its be- 
_ ing a proof in the eyes of the Jewish people, of the mes- 
sianic character and of the divinity of the son of Mary, 
it was calculated, on the contrary, to confirm their doubts 
and incredulity. 


THE DEICIDES. 99 


EIGHTH BOOK. 


Jesus forsaken—Order for his detention—He is betrayed by 
Judas—His apprehension—Personal violence of the Roman 
soldiers—St. Peter’s denial—Examinaiion of Jesus—Prepara- 
tion for his trial and sentence—Jesus before Pilate—Appeal 
to the people—Barabbas—Predictions of Jesus concerning 
his condemnation and death—Execution of Jesus—Cruelty 
of the Roman executioners—Last entreaties of the Jews— 
Last words of Jesus—His death. 


I 9 


WE now approach the close of that career whose social 
action was but of a few years’ duration. We have fol- 
lowed the new doctrine in all the essential phases of its 
development. We have seen Jesus, who at first in his 
famous sermon on the mount, seemed to be only a great 
social and moral reformer, aspire to take the sacred title 
of Messiah and of son of David. Asa natural conse- 
quence of this ambition, which proves that at that time 
he, like all other Hebrews, had interpreted the power of 
the saviour of Israel in a material sense, he was on the 
point of declaring himself king. Finally, indulging in 
ever loftier aspirations, he openly declared himself the 
son of God and God himself. But every time that the 
people and the chiefs gathered around him and entreated 
him no longer to allow their minds to remain in sus- 
pense, but at once to show them the revealing sign by 
which they could recognise and adore him, he answered 
them only with expressions of contempt, and gross in- 
sults, and he left them more uncertain and more incre- 
dulous than before, 


100 THE DEICIDES. 


It will be remembered, that notwithstanding the dan- 
ger to which his exciting utterances might have exposed 
public order, notwithstanding the legitimate indignation — 
felt by the magistrates and Fauctonates who were the 
objects of the prophet of Galilee’s daily attacks, his ar- 
rest had not been ventured on, for fear of exciting a re- 
volt among the people, who were evidently favorably 
disposed. towards him. But when, from the change in 
the sentiments of the masses, all cause of apprehension 
ceased, the guardians of the law of Israel considered 
they were no longer justified in permitting the actions 
and the words of Jesus; above all, they deemed it to be 
their duty to suppress, in its germ, a religious doctrine 
which, by propounding the idea of a God ina human 
form, inflicted a serious blow on monotheism—the first 
principle, the strength, and the future of Israel. 

By the universal consciousness, which makes daily 
progress towards the luminous doctrine of the DIVINE 
UNITY, it will ere long be decided, whether or not they 
were justified in this; but from the point of view of the 
mosaic faith, of that faith which governed Judea, accord- 
ing to the spirit and the letter of the Code of Sinai, they 
had the indisputable right to apply to the case of Jesus, 
‘the penal statutes cited in the preceding chapter. Thus. 
they decided to have done with this religious and politi- 
cal reformer, who was ever exciting agitation among 
the people and disquiet in the popular mind, and this 
too, at a moment when the closest union among all the 
citizens was so necessary for the defence of the common 
country against the Roman invasion, as well as for the 
protection of the religion of the Unity against the con- 
tagion of the polytheistic observances of Rome, the 
mistress of the world. 

On this occasion, they found willing co-adjutors in 
Herod, and in the representatives of the Roman empire. 
Herod, as we have said, had persecuted Jesus with the 
intention of putting him to death, and he owed his safety 


7 2 > > > 3299,? 


> 
? 2 
» ] a] 
3 ) > ae 
> >> ry > 


THE DEICIDES????? °° 108 


only to the merciful warning of the Pharisees.* Besides, 
the attempt of which the object was to make him king, 
must have naturally rendered inimical to him, the chief 
of the Jewish state and the agents of Roman authority. 
In this combination of circumstances, there was more 
than sufficient cause for his being condemned in accord- 
ance with the existing law. 

By the aid of treason, it was not difficult to get pos- 
session of his person. 

The name of Judas Iscariot must remain for ever 
blighted on the page of history and of morality; but 
even under other circumstances, Jesus, having but twelve 
apostles as protectors and followers, evidently could not 
have long eluded the search of those deputed to seize 
him. : 

It is but too certain, that in this final emergency, he 
delivered himself up to his pursuers, and that he expec- 
ted, from reasons which it is here useless to investigate, 
that from his own punishment would result the final 
triumph of the work he had undertaken. 

He had, in fact, frequently announced to his intimate 
friends the necessity for his condemnation and his death, 
in order to ensure the success and the fulfilment of his 
mission here below. We have seen above, that when 
he first revealed his intention of accomplishing this 
painful sacrifice, Peter sought to dissuade him with tears 
and supplications, and that he indignantly replied, ‘‘ Get 
thee behind me, Satan, thou art an offence unto me: 
for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but 
those that be of men.f On other and similar occasions, 
he was still more explicit. When some generous Phari- 
sees came to warn him that Herod had resolved to put 
him to death, and persuaded him to escape, he replied 
that he consented at once to quit Galilee, but that he 
would go to Jerusalem, that he might be perfected, for, 





* Luke xiii. 31 ¢+ Matthew xvi. 23. 
7 


> 


> 
) 


2 


102 "THE DEICIDES. 


added he, a prophet cannot perish out of Jerusalem.* 
And soon after, taking his twelve apostles aside, he said, 
“We are going to Jerusalem, and all things that are 
written by the prophets concerning the son of man shall 
be accomplished.”’t 


It is a singular circumstance that the evangelist who 
records these words, adds, “And the twelve apostles un- 
derstood none of these things.’’t 


Another day he said to them, ‘‘Therefore doth my fa- 
ther love me, because I lay down my life, that I might 
take it again. No‘’man taketh it from me, but I lay it © 
down myself. I have power to lay it down and I have 
power to take it again. This commandment have I re- 
ceived of my father.”§ These sayings, it must be re- 
membered, caused those who heard him to exclaim, “He 
is mad, why hear ye him.”7 His disciples vainly en- 
deavoured to prevent him returning to Jerusalem. “And 
(said they), Master, the Jews have lately sought to stone 





* Et ait illis... Tertia die consummor, verumtamen oportet 
me hodie et cras et sequenti die ambulare, quia non caput pro- 
phetam perire extra Jerusalem.—Luke xiii. 32 and following. 

+ Assumpsit autem Jesus duodecim et ait illis: Ecce ascen- 
dimus Jerosolymam et consummabuntur omnia quz scripta 
sunt per prophetas de Filio hominis. Occident eum et tertia 
die resurget.—Luke xviii. 31 and following. 

t Et ipsi 2zhil horum intellexerunt, et erat verbum illud ab- 
sconditum ab eis, et zon intelligebant que dicebantur. Luke 
XVili. 34. 

§ Propterea me diligit Pater: Quia ego pono animam meam 
ut iterum sumam eam. Nemo tollit eam a me, sed ego pono 
eam a meipso. Hoc mandatum accepi a Patre meo. John x. 
17—18. 

“| Dicebant autem multi: Demonium habet et insanit ; quid 
eum auditis? John x. 20, 


THE DEICIDES. 103 


thee, and goest thou thither again?’”’* Nothing could 
influence the will of the son of Mary, he returned to 
Judea. 

Certainly, after all that had happened ; after the vio- 
lent attacks on the chiefs of the people; after the prose- 
cution, publicly and repeatedly ordered by Herod in 
Galilee, and by the magistrates in Judea; after the vio- 
lent outbreak of the popular feeling, excited to such an 
extent, that the reformer of Nazareth risked being 
stoned ; it was not necessary to be a great prophet, amid 
these concurrent evidences of public opinion and public 
authority, to foresee that Jesus on his return to Jerusa- 
lem would, according to the laws of his country and his 
time, be immediately arrested, tried, and sentenced. 

Let us disregard all that may be considered as human 
and even voluntary in this prediction of his death, and 
let us consider it only under the supernatural view attri- 
buted to it by the Evangelists. What is involved in this 
cruel nécessity, so clearly affirmed by Jesus, in this fatal 
destiny which induced him to choose Jerusalem as the 
scene where this bloody sacrifice should be enacted, and 
the Jews as the instruments of his death? What was to 
be the result of this dévine commandmeut which he de- 
clared himself prepared to obey, and which compelled 
him to lay down his earthly life? Are not all, judge, 
victim, and executioner, the unresisting instruments, the 
irresponsible agents, the blind and hapless victims of the 
irresistible will of a God whose terrible and mysterious ~ 
designs, nothing could counteract, nothing could avert. 

And what would have happened if the Jews, in pur- 
suance of the advice of those who declared that “Jesus 
was madt and was not to be heeded,” had met his violent 





* Deinde post hec dixit discipulis suis: Eamus in Judzam 
iterum. Dicunt ei discipuli: Rabbi, nunc querebant te Judei 
lapidare et iterum vadis illuc? John xi. 7 and following. 

¢ John x. 20, 


104. THE DEICIDES. 


utterances merely with indifference and contempt, and 
had abstained either from prosecuting or condemning 
him? With the disproval of the prediction by the event, 
all pretension to prophecy and divinity would have van- 
ished, and christianity would have been stifled in the 
germ. 

Events, however, did not take this course. Jesus was 
considered to be simply a dangerous revolutionist, whose 
words sowed dissension among the people and threatened 
to compromise the safety of Israel in the presence of the 
Roman invasion.* The world had not then learnt, that 
an idea is not stifled by the death of one man, and that 
the blood of great reformers is fertile in disciples and (if 
they are needed) in martyrs. 


II. 


AT this crisis began a Remon ¢ of painful suffering to the 
son of Mary. 

At the moment of his seizure by the soldiers com- 
manded to arrest him, all his disciples, instead of claim- 
ing the glory of dying with him, abandoned him, and 
took to flight.t His well-beloved disciple Simon Peter, 
he to whom he had promised the throne of the universal 
Church, he, this Peter, denied him three several times, 
while his master was groaning in prison, exposed to the 
insults of the Roman soldiers. This moral weakness, 
this shameful desertion must have been more painful to 





* Collegerunt ergo Pontifices et Phariszi concilium et dice- 
bant.... Si dimittimus eum omnes credent in eum, et venient 
Romani et tollent nostrum locum et gentem. Unus autem ex 
ipsis Caiphas nomine, cum esset Pontifex anni illius dixit eis: 
Vos nescitis quidquam: ne cogitatis quia expedit vobis, wt w- 
us moriatur homo pro populo, et non tota gens pereat, John i. 47. 

+ Tunc discipuli ejus, relinguentes eum, omnes fugerunt. 
Mare. xiv, | 


THE DEICIDES. 105 


the heart of Jesus than the tortures he was about to 
endure. 

Meanwhile Jesus was conducted before the chief Jew- 
ish tribunal, where presided the high priest, the princes, 
the scribes, and the elders of Israel, and then began his 
examination. Witnesses were calledt who must have 
been numerous; for the deeds and words of Jesus had 
béen done and spoken in the presence of the public. 
Two serious enquiries were entered upon; two counts 
of indictment (to use law terms) were produced. The 
one referred to the religious, the other to the political 
aspect of his misdemeanours, Jesus was accused of 
having violated the law of Israel in declaring himself the 
Son of God; he was also accused. of having sought to 
overturn the established authorities, and to usurp the 
sovereign power in their place. The first of these offen- 
ces came under the jurisdiction of the Hebrew Sanhe- — 
drin, the second under that of Herod, or Pontius Pilate, 
then invested with all political power in Judea. 


The Gospel proves that the trial instituted before the 
Sanhedrin was accompanied by all the formalities cus- 
tomary on those occasions. 


After the examination of the witnesses whose deposi- 
tions were more or less concurrent, the High Priest ris- 
ing in the midst of the assembly questioned Jesus,§ say- 
ing, ‘ Thou repliest nothing to that which these testify 
against thee,”’ but he held his peace and answered noth- 





* Marc. xiv. 63. + Mark xiv. 53 and following. 

{ It is superfluous for us to dwell on the judicial portion of 
the trial of Jesus. The question of legality has no relation to 
the purpose of this treatise. What, in fact, could we advance, 
after the important labours of Mr. Salvador on this serious 
question,? (‘Institutions of Moses and the Hebrew people and 
the Reply of M. Dupin.” 

§ Et convenientia testimonia non erant Mark xiv. 56, 59. 


106 THE DEICIDES. 


ing.* Again the High Priest said unto him, “Is it true 
that thou art the Christ?” He replied, “If I say I am, 
you will not believe me; but you shall see the son of 
man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in 
the clouds of Heaven.” Then the judges replied, “Then 
thou art the son of God,” and he replied, ‘‘Thou hast 
said it, 1am.” Then the High Priest said, “What need 
we other witnesses? Ye have heard the dlasphemy he 
has uttered ; what think ye?’”’ Then they all condemned 
him to be guilty of death.t | 

But subsequently to the Roman conquest, the Jews 
had had no right to execute public sentences without 
the previous authorisation of the pretor. Therefore af- 
ter sentence was pronounced, the members of the chief 
tribunal caused Jesus to be led before Pontius Pilate. 
The second count of the indictment which referred to 
the attempt of Jesus to cause himself to be proclaimed 
King of the Jews, had then to be decided. Thus the 
question discussed before the Roman Pontiff were ex- 
clusively political. 

The Jews who appeared before Pilate on this occasion, 
stated to him that Jesus excited the people to revolt by 





* Et exsurgens summus sacerdos in medium interrogavit 
Jesum dicens: Non respondes quidquam ad ea quz tibi ob- 
jiciuntur ab his? ille autem tacebat et nihil respondit. Mark 
xiv. 60, 61. 

+ Et ut factus est dies... . duxerunt in consilium suum. 
Rursum summus sacerdos intérrogabat eum et dixit ei. Tu est 
Christus ?—et ait illis: Si vobis dixero, non credetis mihi... 
videbitis Filium hominis sedentem a dextris virtutis Dei et ve- 
nientem cum nubibus celi. Dixerunt autem omnes: Tu ergo 
es filius Dei? Qui ait: vos dicitis, guza ego sum. Summus au- 
tem sacerdos scindens vestimenta sua, ait: Quid adhuc desi- 
deremus testes? Audistis blasphemiam ; quid vobis videtur? 
Qui omnes condemnaverunt eum esse reum mortis. Compare 
Luke xxiii. passim: and Mark xiv. 60 and following. 


THE DEICIDES. 107 


the doctrine which he disseminated in Judea, and that 
he perverted the nation by calling himself king and 
Christ.* Pilate interrogated Jesus saying, “Is it true 
that thou art king of the Jews?’’t and Jesus replied, 
“You have said it, I am.” But the Pretor, notwith- 
standing so categorical an answer, did not seem to erter- 
tain much apprehension of the risk to which this claim 
might expose the Roman power. He, on the contrary, 
evinced a kindly purpose towards him.{ The violence 
of the popular feeling against Jesus, however, speedily 
overcame his scruples. The people assembled at the 
doors of the palace cried out, ‘“‘ Take him, take him, cru- 
cify him, crucify him, he must be punished.’’§ “‘ We have 
a law, and by our law he is worthy of death because he 
has made himself the son of God.} Still Pontius Pilate 
hesitated, and made a last effort on behalf of Jesus. It 
was Customary, at the season of the Passover, to pardon 
one Criminal, and he therefore proposed to the Jews to 
choose whether Jesus or Barabbas, a man in prison for 
having committed a murder during a popular tumult, 
should be the one to whom pardon should be granted.1 





* Duxerunt eum ad Pilatum et cceperunt illum accusare di- 
centes: Hunc invenimus subvertentem gentem nostram.... 
et dicentem se Christum regem esse. . . Commovet populum 
docens per universum Judezum. Luke xxiii. 1 and following. 

+ Pilatus autem interrogavit eum dicens: Tu es rex Judzo- . 
rum? At ille respondens ait: Tu dicis, Luke xxiii. 3; John 
Xviii. 33. 

¢ Luke xxiii.; John xviii.; Matt. xvii.; Mark xv. passim. 

§ Luke xxiii. 21 and following. 

|| Responderunt ei Judzi: Nos legem habemus, et secundum 
legem debet mori, guia Filium Dei se facit. John xix. 7. 

- § John calls Barabbas a thief, but wrongly. (“Erat autem 
Barabbas latro.”) Mark and Luke say very clearly that he was 
a seditious character who had committed a murder in a popu- 
lar riot. Qui erat propter seditionem quandam factam in civi- 


tate et homicidium missus in carcerem. Luke xxiii. 19 ; Mark 
XV. 7. 


108 THE DEICIDES. 


But the people with one accord demanded that Barab- 
bas should be pardoned, and that Jesus should be put 
to death. 

In opposition to this determined and unanimous pop- 
ular wish, Pilate hesitated no longer; he delivered over 
Jesus to the Roman soldiers for execution, in pursuance 
of the sentence passed upon him. 

We have now reached a solemn and painful moment. 
the passion of Jesus was completed in all its most sor- 
rowful and lamentable reality. The hour had come for 
him to die and to disappear from this world. At this last 
moment would some decisive revelation burst upon the 
sight of the people? And would the god thus iniquit- 
ously condemned, appear suddenly in his glory and strike 
his judges and executioners with stupefaction and ter- 
ror? The Gospel furnishes us with an answer to this 
question, 


III. 


WE have never been able to read unmoved, the account 
given in the narrative of the four evangelists, of the 
execution of the sentence of death pronounced on Jesus. 
All the insults and tortures by which the horror of his 
punishment was aggravated ; the crown of thorns pierc- 
ing his brow; the blows showered on him; the indigni- 
ties which polluted his countenance ; his weary ascent 
to the place of execution, on that mount Calvary, on 
which he was destined to perish, placed between two 
thieves ; the vinegarand gall with which, by a refinement 
of cruelty, his parched lips were moistened, and the 
wound dealt him in the side by the lance of a brutal sol- 
dier. But let us once for all, here distinctly repudiate 
any complicity of the Jewish people in all these atroci- 
ties. The Gospel itself, more equitable than those whose 
law it has become, declares that these Romans were the 
sole perpetrators of these acts of barbarity which were 


THE DEICIDES, — 109 


among their customs and were commonly practised by 
the imperial people. As for the Jews, the part acted by 
them in this fearful drama, was limited according to the 
showing of the Gospel, to the utterance of a few words, 
which far from being spoken in derision, as fhe apostles 
assume, were on the contrary a last appeal addressed by 
the popular voice to him as Christ and the son of God. 

Jesus was extended on a cross, a mode of punishment 
imported by the Romans into Judza. One of the two 
thieves, who had been condemned to the same fearful 
expiation of their crimes, cursed him, exclaiming, “If 
thou art indeed the Christ, deliver thyself and save us 
with thee.”* Then voices was heard from among the 
crowd, saying, “If he is truly the son of God, let him 
come down from the cross;”’ other voices rejoined, 
‘‘Yea, let him descend from the cross, and we will be- 
lieve in him.” If God then verily loves him, let Him 
deliver him now, since he said, “I am the son of God.’’t 

This language is wonderfully characteristic of the 
mental condition of the Jews at that period. Unlike the 
fierce Roman soldiery, they offer no violence, no insults, 
to Jesus; they once more and for the last time conjure 
him to reveal his power as Messiah and the son of God 
by some striking sign; they promise ¢o deléeve in him, 
unreservedly, if at this last crisis he will deign to grant 
them the decisive proofs that they have so long and so 
vainly solicited. 

And in truth, how profound would have been the im- 
pression produced on the assembled Jews and Pagans, 





* Unus autem (de) his qui pendebant latronibus, blasphe- 
mabat eum dicens: Si tu es Christus, salvum fac temetipsum 
et nos. Luke xxiii. 39. 

+ Et dicentes.... si filius Dei es, decende de cruce... 
Descendat nunc de cruce, et credimus et, Confidit in Deo ; libe- 
ret nunc, si vult, eum; dixit enim: Quia filius Dei sum. ‘Matt. 
%XVii. 40. 


110 THE DEICIDES. 


if, raising himself suddenly in all the splendour of his 
divinity, he had snapped asunder the nails which fast- 
ened him to the cross, as though they had been glass, 
and had descended from the infamous gibbet unscathed 
and unwounded; thus striking his executioners with 
awe, and assuming, in the dazzled sight of all beholders, 
a halo of celestial brilliancy and eternal majesty! Would 
there have beena single man in Israel, would there have 
been a single Roman capable of withstanding the might 
of this astounding revelation? And how many centuries 
of martyrdom, of struggle, of fratricidal war, of persecu- 
tion and of calamity would have been spared to the 
Christians of the early church and to the Jews through- 
out their dispersions; the former, victims of the incre- 
dulity and the opposition of the Roman world—the lat- 
ter, victims of an implacable hatred, which eighteen — 
centuries of suffering and exile have not sufficed to ap- 
pease! 

Yes! the solemn appeal made by the Jewish people to 
Jesus on the cross, was the sincere and enthusiastic cry 
of the popular conscience. Yes! the entire people and 
their chiefs would have rejoiced at the appearance and 
manifestation of that startling miracle, of that much-de- 
sired Messiah, the promised liberator, the glory and 
salvation of Israel! 


VI. 


UNFORTUNATELY this crowning proof, all powerful as it 
would have been, was denied them. Jesus died as all 
men die, and the very last words he uttered before he 
expired, were calculated yet more completely (had this 
been possible), to annihilate any belief in his divinity in 
the minds of the people. It was about the ninth hour, 
says the gospel, that Jesus uttered a loud cry, saying, 
Eli, eli, lamma asabtani, which signifies, ‘My God, my 


THE DEICIDES. III 


God, why hast thou forsaken me.”* This exclamation 
was doubtless understood by those who heard it in its 
simple and natural sense; since it excluded and nullified 
all notion of a divine nature. For, in declaring himself 
forsaken of God Himself, did he not virtually deny his 
own participation in the divine nature, in the essence 
and power of the Eternal? Did he not even deny any 
share in the inspiration and in the authority emanating 
from, and appertaining to, the Deity? Never did Moses, 
never did any of the prophets betray such dark despair, 
such failing hope. 

At*this awful moment the Hebrews must have felt 
more than ever convinced of the justice of the sentence 
pronounced on the son of Mary. They no longer hesi- 
tated to class. him with the crowd of pseudo-prophets 
and false messiahs who had long previously successively 
arisen in Israel, morbidly exciting popular passions, 
without any benefit arising therefrom. 

The master of the Gospel pronounced, before breath- 
ing his last, a sublime axiom which ought to have been 
regarded as a command by his disciples, an expression 
which throws much light on the mental condition of the 
people, his contemporaries. ‘My Father,” heexclaims, 
“my Father, forgive them, for they know not what they 
do.”’t 

They know not what they do; an irrefutable truth, 
coming from the conscience of the Galilean reformer, 
at the last moment of his life. Yes! the Jews verily 
knew not what they did. They could not know, for 
nothing had disclosed it to them, that they had sentenced 
a prophet to death, a Messiah! a God! No! they knew 





* Et circa horam nonam clamavit Jesus voce magna dicens: 
Eli, Eli, lamma Sabatani? Hoc est; Deus meus, Deus meus, 
ut quid dereliquisti me? Matt. xxvii. 46. 

+ Jesus autem dicebat: Pater dimitte illis, Mow enim sctunt 
quid faciunt, Luke xxiii. 34. 


112 (0. SPREE DEICIDE. 


not what they did; and therefore not knowing, in virtue 
of what law could they be pronounced guilty of Deicide, 
which imputation has served as an iniquitous pretext 
for eighteen centuries of relentless persecution? 

But he whom they condemned to this last bitter an- 
guish, gentle and merciful in the hour of dissolution, 
besought his God thus, “My Father, pardon them, for 
they know not what they do.” Yet, far from pardoning, 
the followers of the great and crucified reformer have 
vowed a pitiless, undying hatred against the Hebrew 
people, the blind and unconscious instruments of the 
decree of the Eternal, a hatred to which millions of in- 
nocent Jews have been sacrificed. Thus have they ex- 
piated the pretended crime of their ancestors, perishing 
by thousands at the stake, in gigantic massacres, in he- 
catombs of victims, amid the wrath and the scorn of. 
their persecutors. ! 

Alas! for the dark passions of humanity! Alas! for 
the despotism of worldly interest! Alas! for the cruel 
violation of the holy law of mercy, charity and love! 


THE DEICIDES. 1313 


NINTH BOOK. 


Resurrection of Jesus—His interment by Joseph Aramatheus— 
Application of the Pharisees to Pilate—The resurrection of 
Jesus occurs unseen by witnesses—Public opinion concern- 
ing his disappearance—Events posterior to the resurrection 
—Descrepancies in the narratives of the Evangelists—Jesus 
appears to Mary and to severa! of his disciples, without being 
recognised—Doubts of the apostles—The episode of Emmaus 
—General observations, 


I. 


ALL was thus accomplished ; Jesus was no more; Christi- 
anity was about to arise. Buta final manifestation was 
to be made, before the founder of the new doctrine dis- 
appeared for ever from this world. 

It will be remembered that when Jesus was pressed by 
the Pharisees to show them a revealing sign of his mis-_ 
sion, he had replied that the only sign to be accorded to 
them was that of the prophet Jonas ; that is to say, inas- 
much as the prophet Jonas remained three days and three 
nights in the belly of the whale, so the “Son of Man” 
would remain three days and three nights buried in the 
bosom of the earth, and would arise on the third day.* 
This prediction had the disadvantage of postponing to a 





* Quidam de Scribis et Phariszis dicentes: Magister, volu- 
mus ate signum videre. Qui respondens ait illis: Generatio 
mala et adultera signum quzerit, et non dabitur ei, nisi signum 
Jonz prophete. Sicut enim fuit Jonas in ventre ceti, tribus 
diebus et tribus noctibus, sic erit Filius hominis in corde terre. 
tribus diebus et tribus noctibus.—Matthew xii. 38 and follow- 
ing ; Ibid. xvi. 1 and following ; Luke xi, 29. 


‘II4 THE DEICIDES. 


period posterior to his death, the proof of his mission 

and of thus leaving the Hebrew people in a very natural 

condition of uncertainty. But at length, this striking- 
resurrection occurring in the sight of the whole nation, 

this victory over death would have afforded to all incon- 

trovertible proof. 

The Gospel has preserved important details respecting 
this closing period of the connection of Jesus with the 
visible world. 

It is certainly difficult to perceive any agreement in the 
accounts given by the four Evangelists of the resurrec- 
tion. We will confine ourselves to the various signs 
which are severally related by the Evangelists, concerning 
this important fact ; and we will then consider whether, 
in the eyes of the contemporaries, its reality could be 
unhesitatingly accepted. 

The four sacred biographies of Fescs agree on two 
points; his interment and the disappearance of his body 
_ from the sepulchre in which it had been deposited. But 
not one says a single word as tothe circumstances them- 
selves, by which its disappearance was attended. The 
following, however, is their simple narrative. 

They all relate that as soon as Jesus expired, Joseph 
of Arimathzea, who was secretly one of his disciples, went 
to Pilate and asked for the corpse in order to bury it; 
and this request was granted.* Then he placed it with- 
out help, according to St. Matthew, St. Mark and St. 
Luke, or, according to St. John, t assisted by Nicodemus, 
in a vault that he had hewn out in the rock, and after 
rolling a large stone to the door of the sepulchre he de- 
parted.t No one was called to be a witness of this fun- 





* Matthew XXvii. 57, 58. 

+ Ibid. 59 sq. Mark xv. 46. Luke xxiii. 53. John xix. 39. 40. 

¢ Et posuit illud in monumento suo novo quod exciderat in 
petra, et advolvit saxum magnum ad ostium monumenti, et 
abiit—Matth, xxvii. 60. 


THE DEICIDES, 115 


eral ceremony, which, after an ignominious death, and 
under the painful circumstances amid which it was per- 
formed, was of course necessarily secret and devoid of 
all pomp. Was Jesus really put into the tomb here de- 
scribed? Theevangelists unanimously state that he was; 
and there is nothing to deter us from accepting their tes- 
timony without reserve. 

What occurred in the night between Friday and Satur- 
day which followed this interment? All the evangelists 
observed the strictest silence on this matter, leaving free 
scope to the hypothesis of future ages and to the criti- 
cisms of the adversaries of Christianity. The latter in 
fact, have not failed to suggest that those interested in 
diffusing the belief in Jesus’ resurrection, had during this 
interval more than necessary time for removing his body 
from the sepulchre in which Joseph of Arimathza had 
placed it. 

However this may have been, it was only on the follow- 
ing day* that the Pharisees sent to Pilate, saying, “Sir, we 
remember that that deceiver said when he was yet alive, 
‘After three days I will rise again.’ .Command, there- 
fore, that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, 
lest the disciples come by night and steal him away, and 
say unto the people, ‘ He is risen from the dead:’ so the 
last error shall be worse than the first. Pilate said unto 
them, ‘Ye have a watch, go your way and make it 
as sure as ye can.’”’ Though this precaution was taken 
too late, they went, sealed the stone and set a watch 
there.+ 

We must here remark that Matthew is the sole repor- 
ter of this proceeding on the part of the Pharisees, and 
of the presence of Jewish sentinels at Jesus’ tomb onthe 





* Altera autem die, quae est post Parasceven, convenerunt 
principes sacerdotum et pharisaei at Pilatum, etc.—Matthew 
XXvVii. 62 sq. 

+ Matthew xxvii. 66. 


116 | THE DEICIDES. | 


second day after the burial. Mark, Luke, and J ohn, say- 
ing not a word on the matter, have thus caused many 
doubts to arise as to the truth of the incident. 


Whether guarded or not, the tomb is not the scene of 
any characteristic event ; nothing supernatural occurred 
there during the succeeding day. 


The first day of the week was at hand, it was the mo- 
ment at which the divine miracle was to shine forth, 
when the God confined in the dark sepulichre was to 
break the bonds of death and ascend in his ineffable 
glory towards the heavens opening to receivehim. The 
world was to witness this sublime transfiguration, when 
Jesus divested of the last earthly ties, was to reveal him- 
self in his celestial majesty and by the splendour of his 
triumph to compel those to adore him as a God who, 
during his human existence, had disputed his divinity, 


I seek in vain in the Gospel for the record of the mo. 
ment when this miracle occurred, and for the incidents 
amid which it was fulfilled. Reference to it is no where 
to be found. The evangelists dwell only on the events 
posterior to the disappearance of the body ofJesus. As 
for the resurrection itself, it took place apparently unob- 
served by any witness: neither the sentinels guarding the 
tomb, nor the disciples of Jesus, beheld it with their own 
eyes; and they were consequently unable to testify toits 
attendant incidents. 


Thus, the event which Jesus had predicted, and had 
announced as an irrefutable sign, his resurrection from 
the dead, was not followed by any public manifestation. 
The unrecognised and crucified God, after having during 
his briefexistence on this earth, so often refused to vouch- 
safe to the Hebrews evident proof of his divinity, doubt- 
lessly did not consider them worthy to be witnesses of his 
resurrection ; this last act of the terrible drama in which 
he had been the principal was enacted unseen by human 
eye. How deeply is this final resolution to be deplored} 


THE DEICIDES. 117 


Let us then imagine a loud noise being suddenly heard 
on the earth and in the heavens; voices resounding from 
the four corners ofthe horizon; the awful trumpets of the 
heavenly hosts pealing amidst the convulsion of the ele- 
ments, all the inhabitants of Jerusalem pale with terror, 
hastening to the tomb of the great one crucified, impelled 
by a power divine towards the spot where the grandest 
and most solemn of miracles was about to be performed 
then, suddenly, the tomb opening and the God arising 
shattering the funeral stone that had in vain opposed his 
upward flight in the sight of the assembled crowd pros- 
trate in awe and admiration; then would all Israel, then 
would the whole Roman world have been converted on 
the spot, and the day predicted by the prophet oe 
have been thenceforth accomplished. 

Unfortunately, events did not occur with this conspic- 
uousness and publicity. Jesus disappeared from the se- 
pulchre, and not one among the evangelists is enabled 
to inform us how, at what moment, or amid what series 
of circumstances this mysteriofis withdrawal took place. 

Matthew states (but he is the only evangelist that re- 
cords the facts) that the senators, princes, and priests, on 
hearing that the body of Jesus had disappeared from the 
tomb, offered a large sum of money to the soldiers, say- 
ing “Say ye, His disciples came by night and stole him 
away while we slept. And if this comes to the gover- 
nor’s ears, we will persuade him, and secure you. So 
they took the money, and did as they were taught; and 
this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until 
this day.’’** We need-not here inquire whether the act of 
bribery here referred to is, or is not, clearly proved. 





* Pecuniam copiosam dederunt militibus dicentes: Dicite, 
quia discipuli ejus nocte venerunt et furati sunt eum, nobis 
dormientibus... At illi accepta pecunia fecerunt sicut erant 
edocti. Et divulgatum est verbum istud apud Judaeos, usque 
in hodiernam diem. Matthew xxviii. 12 sq. 


s 


118 THE DEICIDES. 


Neither St. Mark, nor St. Luke, nor St. John mentions 
it, notwithstanding its important character. Whether 
true or false, it resulted therefrom that a belief became 
general among the Jews, that the disciples had, during 
the night, clandestinely removed the body of their master; 
and as this belief rested on the statement of the soldiers 
themselves, who had been placed to guard the tomb, and 
was not disproved by any supernatural and well-known 
event, no blame can fairly be cast on the Jews for having 
unanimously received it. 


II, 


No person, then, was present at the resurrection of Jesus. 
Only on the Sunday, Mary Magdalen, “and the other 
Mary,” having come to see the sepulchre, the earth trem- 
bled, the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, re- 
moved the stone which closed the tomb, and seating him- 
self thereon addressed the women saying, “‘ Fear not ye, 
for I know that ye seek Jesus which was crucified. He 
zs not here, for he is risen, ashe said. Come, see the place 
where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his dis- 
ciples that he is risen from the dead, and behold he goeth 
before you into Galilee, there shall ye see him; lo, I have 
told you.” 

Such is the narrative of Matthew; it is far from being 
identical with those of the other evangelists. In St. Mark 
the two holy women, on their arrival, find the stone or 
the sepulchre removed, and on entering the tomb they 
perceive, not an angel, but a young man dressed in white, 
who addresses to them nearly the same words which 
Matthew puts into the mouth ofthe angel.* According to 
St. Luke, when the two Marys were appalled at not find- 





t+ ‘And entering into the sepulchre they saw a young man,” 
Mark xvi. 5 


THE DEICIDES. 119 


ing the body of Christ when they sought it, two men ap- 
peared before them and informed them that Jesus had 
risen.* St. John again states that Mary Magdalen having 
found the stone removed from the sepulchre, went weep- 
ing to seek Simon Peter and another disciple, and said to 
them. ‘They have takenaway the Lord, and I know not 
where they have laid him.” These disciples having verified 
her statement, returned to their homes; and it was only 
after these occurrences that Mary, having stooped, bathed 
in tears, to look into the tomb, perceived /wo angels seated 
on the spot where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the 
head and the other at the feet ; and these angels did not 
give here the explanation of the circumstance, which is 
furnished by the other evangelists, but simply said to her, 
‘“Woman, why weepest thou?” and she said unto them, 
“Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know 
not where they have laid him.”’f 

It is useless to enumerate the discrepancies of these 
several narratives. It is very doubtful zf the people re- 
ceived such varying accounts whether they could accept 
them as positive testimony of their authenticity. We say 
zf this narrative were known to the people, because St. 
Mark declares that the holy women, after beholding the 
apparitions of the sepulchre, went out quickly and fled, 
for they trembled and were amazed ;} neither said they 
anything to any man, for they were afraid.” 

And yet, if we are to believe two of the evangelists, 
Mattew and John, Jesus himself appeared to them in 
the sepulchre.§ 





* And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed there- 
about, behold two men stood by them,” etc. Luke xxiv. 4. 

t But Mary stood without at the sepulchre, weeping ; and as 
she wept, she stooped down and looked into the sepulchre, 
and seeth two angels in white,” etc. John xx. 11 and the fol- 
lowing. 

¢ Mark xvi.8.... § John xx. 14; Matthew xxviii. 9. 


120 THE DEICIDES. 


However, in the narrative of John, it is said that Mary, 
having herself turned back, saw Jesus standing, but knew 
not that it was he, 4ut supposing him to be the gardener, 
said unto him, “Sir, if thou hast borne him hence, tell 
me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.’’* 
Finally, it was necessary for Jesus to open her eyes, that 
she might recognise in him the one she sought. 


The blindeness of the disciples was greater far, and the 
surprise which their hesitation excites can but be extreme, 
when the express terms are remembered in which Jesus 
had proclaimed the necessity of his death, and the cer- 
tainty of his resurrection. 


_ What had been related to them concerning the fact of 
the resurrection itself, had been received by the eleven 
disciples with nought save manifest incredulity. Mary 
Magdalen, having told them that Jesus was alive and 
that she had seen him, ¢hey believed her not.t What she 
told them seemed to them mere idle tales, and they be- 
lieved her not,f This inexplicable scepticism becomes 
- more evident in the course of the Gospel narrative. 

According to St. Matthew, Jesus when revealing him- 
self to the holy women, said to them, “Be not afraid; go 
tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall 
they see me.’’§ 

It may perhaps appear strange and unfortunate that 
he did not consider it advisable to reveal himself to the 
apostles in Jerusalem itself, and that he did not publicly 
appear in the midst of Judea, the victor over death itself; 
. but let us not judge the secret designs of this man-god, 
whose whole life is so incomprehensible, and let us ac- 
company his favourite disciples into Galilee. 





* John xx. 14and 15. Et non sciebat quia Jesus esset... 
Illa existimans quia hortulanus esset, dicit ei: Domine, si tu 
sustulisti eum, dicito mihi ubi posuisti, et ego eum tollam. 

t Mark xvi.t1. + Luke xxiv.11. § Matthew xxviii. 10. 


THE DEICIDES. yar 


“Then the eleven disciples, says Matthew, went away 
into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed 
them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him.” 
But some doubted,* adds the Gospel. They doubted / Where- 
fore? The other evangelists furnish us with an explana- 
tion ; it was because the appearance of Jesus after his re- 
surrection, whether from some unknown cause, or 
whether from his having assumed a superhuman trans- 
figuration, was not identical with the appearance of 
Jesus in the life ; and those who had been in the closest 
intercourse with him in his human existence, had diffi- 
culty in recognising him. 

We have already seen that Mary Magdalen did not 
recognise Jesus at the first moment in the sepulchre. 
‘“‘He appeared under another form,t said Mark to two of 
his disciples, as they walked and went into the country; 
and they went and told it to the other disciples; neither 
believed they them.’’t 

The episode of Emmaus is not less extraordinary. 

Two of his disciples went to a village called Emmaus, 
which was about sixty furlongs distant from Jerusalem. 
As they talked together of all these things that had 
happened, Jesus drew near, and went with them; but 
their eyes were holden, that they should not know hin.§ 

They walked side by side for a considerable time, 
meanwhile relating to Jesus the events which had recent- 
ly happened in Jerusalem, his crucifixion and the report 
of his resurrection. And here we may remark a singular 
fact. In speaking of Jesus, they call him a Prophet, 
mighty tn word and deed before God and all the people, but 
they do not designate him by the name of God. Jesus, 
in his turn, talked with them, expounded unto them all 
the Scriptures, and was about to quit them; but they per- 
suaded him to stop at the village to eat meat at their 





* Matthew xxviii. 17. + Mark xvi. 12. 
t Mark xvi. 13. § Luke xxiv. 16. || Luke 2d, rg. 


122 2 THE DEICIDES. 


table, and it was only when he broke the holy bread with 
them, that their eyes were opened; but when they at 
last recognised him, he vanished from their astonished 
sight.* They returned from Jerusalem, related what they 
had seen to the eleven apostles, and as they spoke, Jesus 
stood in the: midst of them and said unto them, “ Peace 
be with you.” 

But they were terihed and affrighted, and supposed - 
they had seen a spirtt.t It was necessary for Jesus, in 
order to remove their incredulity, to show them his 
hands and feet pierced with the nails of the cross, and 
that St. Thomas, who has become the symbol of religious 
scepticism, should thrust his fingers into the bleeding 
wounds.{ As notwithstanding all this, they as yet did 
not believe, he asked for food,§ and really ate a piece 
of fish and some honeycomb, by which they were con- 
vinced that he was truly risen. 

Jesus appeared once more on the shore of the sea of 
Tiberias, to Simon Peter, to Thomas, to Nathaniel, to the 
sons of Zebedee, and to two others who where occupied 
in fishing from a boat. It was at the dawn of day Jesus 
appeared on the bank, and again on this occasion 42s 
disciples did not recognise him.| This was the last appear- 
ance of Jesus in this world. 


iil. 


‘This is all the information which the Gospel has pre- 
served for us, concerning the resurrection of the cruci- 
fied God, and the circumstances under which he appeared 
after his death. We here enter into no criticism of the 
Gospel ; we do not discuss the greater or less probability 
of these wonderful recitals ; we will not here investigate 


* Luke xxiv. 30 and 31. + Luke xxiv. 37. 
t Luke 2d. 38; John xx. 26 and 27. 
§ Luke xxiv. 41. | John xxi. 4. 





THE DEICIDES. 123 


whether the two Marys and the favourite disciples were 
not, in the sepulchre and elsewhere, deluded by visions 
and hallucinations, of which we have such: numerous 
examples; still less will we enquire, whether the events 
which they record, and the general belief in which, they 
had so manifest an interest to establish, did really and 
truly occur. No! Weconsider the Gospels as records of 
truth, and we ask every sincere and impartial mind, 
whether it was possible that the Jews could conscienti- 
ously admit the truth of the resurrection of Jesus, 
- whether they even had any positive knowledge of its 
occurrence, as oa) 

According to the Gospel statement, the material fact 
of the resurrection was seen by no one, and could not 
therefore be publicly verified. At the expiration of two 
days, the tomb in which the body of Jesus had been de- 
posited was found empty, the stone which closed up the 
entrance had been removed. By whom? By what means? 
Under what circumstances? The,Gospel gives us'no re- 
ply. The holy women who came to weep at the tomb 
of Jesus, struck with dismay, instead of believing in the 
resurrection, accused the Jews of having removed the 
body of the Saviour, while the Jews, on their side, with 
quite as much credibility, accused the disciples of having 
during the night, clandestinely abstracted the mortal 
remains of their master. How is light to be thrown? 
How is the truth to be ascertained in respect of these 
two contrary assumptions, which both found utterance so 
soon as the disappearance of the body became known? 
What! the disciples themselves, who had been warned 
of this event, refused to believe in it ; they doubted even 
when Jesus showed himself to.them in Galilee. Jesus, 
arisen, appeared two or three times, and the apostles 
and Mary Magdalen took him fora stranger, and did not 
recognise the features of him with whom they had so 
long lived in intimate communion ; and the Jewish people, 
who had not been present at any of these-miraculous 


124 THE DEICIDES. 


apparitions, to whom it had not been granted, as it had 
been to St. Thomas, to touch the hands, the side, and 
the wounds of the crucified Redeemer, were to be more 
confiding, more credulous than these! Besides, how 
could this faith be disseminated among the masses ? 

Jesus did reveal himself after his death, to some privi- 

leged disciples; but he was never seen by any of.the 
inhabitants of Jerusalem or Judzea; he did not even arise 
in avenging sublimity in the presence ofhis executioners, 
in order to convince them, and to fill their souls with 
dread and remorse. How then, could the Jews have 
believed in narratives, moreover, inconsistent with each 
other, and produced by those who pretended to have 
seen him in places very remote from the capital, and 
whose testimony was necessarily exposed to suspicion, 
in consequence of their interest being involved in the 
dissemination of this belief? 

Thus, the evidence of the resurrection, the signs which 
_were to prove Christ’s divinity with a refulgence greater 
than the light of day, were not vouchsafed to the Jewish 
people. Let us place ourselves for a moment in the 
position of the contemporaries of these events, and let us 
ask ourselves, with all the integrity of our consciences, 
if those occurrences were of a nature to inspire unhesi- 

tating belief, and if we can blame the incredulity by 
' which the Jews were then actuated. 


THE DEICIDES. 128 


TENTH BOOK. 


THE morality of the Gospel—The Jews always held the moral 
precepts taught by Jesus—They opposed the assertion of his 
divinity only—The morality of the Gospel is identical with 
that of the Bible—Important innovation for the Pagan world, 
but not for the Jewish people—Parables—Man lives not by 
bread alone—The righteous shall live by faith—The Sellers 
driven from the Temple—Suffer little children to come unto 
me—The lost sheep—Respect of Jesus for the ancient law— 
Morality of the Pentateuch cited by him as a condition of 
eternal salvation—The Prophets and Jewish ceremoniai— 
Simplification of the law—Hypocritical Pharisees. 


I. 


WE have impartially recorded,_on the textual authority 
of the Gospel alone, the various incidents in the life and 
death of Jesus, and we have asked ourselves if the Jew- 
ish contemporaries could possibly therein have found 
sufficient proof of his divinity. We think, on the cont- 
rary, everything indicates that they could not have 
known they were condemning a god, and causing him 
to perish who had come on earth in order to save them. 
But our investigation would not be conclusive, if we did 
not consider a last objection, many times raised by the 
adversaries of Judaism. 

How is this? say they. In the absence of other ma- 
terial proofs, ought not the admirable morality preached 
by Jesus, in itself have sufficiently revealed to the Jews 
the prophet and the God? This profound love of hu- 
manity, these beautiful principles of piety and virtue, the 
spirit of superhuman kindness breathed from every page 

8 


» 


126 THE DEICIDES. 


of the Gospels,—do not these furnish testimony as de- 
cisive as the miracles, of the divine character and au- 
thority of him from whom they emanated? Thus, in 
systematically rejecting the Gospel, in voluntarily shut- 
ting their eyes to the resplendent light of Christian mo- 
rality, the Jews committed a true and undeniable crime ; 
in this was involved, if it may be permitted so to say, a 
moral DEICIDE, and this fault causes a heavy historical 
responsibility also to weigh upon them. 

This is the objection; it cannot be passed over in 
silence. It is, moreover, of importance that the argu- 
ment so often employed in opposition to Judaism—viz., 
that the morality of the New, is superior to that of the 
Old Testament, should be once forsall thoroughly inves- 
tigated. 


IT. 


HERE some preliminary observations are necessary. 
The moral principles of the doctrines of Jesus were, in 
fact, never rejected by his contemporaries. We have 
seen that on every occasion when he spoke in public, 
there gathered around him an attentive, respectful, and 
sympathetic assemblage. According to the narratives 
of the Evangelists, the utterances of the new Rabbi 
everywhere excited admiration, even enthusiasm. In 
him was greeted a new prophet; he was applauded as 
reviving the grand traditions of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jere- 
miah, and all the illustrious seers of Israel. The people 
hastened to meet him at the entrance of the town, bear- 
ing palm branches and uttering cries of joy. When he 
arrived at Jerusalem, the entire city kept holiday, and 
all flocked to see “the new prophet of Nazareth.” 

It is impossible too strenuously to insist upon this 
_ truth, to which the whole Gospel narrative testifies. The 
Jews did not hesitate a moment to form a favourable 
opinion of the Son of Mary; they constantly listened to 


THE'DBICIDES ~ = Sst 


his discourses, to his teachings and his denunciations or 
the vices of the people and their chiefs, with equal de- 
ference and submission. The authorities themselves, 
the Scribes and the Pharisees, who were so violently 
attacked and so passionately denounced by the young 
doctor as deserving the hatred and contempt of the 
nation, gave proof, in their treatment of Jesus, of the 
spirit of toleration and indulgence by which they were 
animated. Whether induced by the fear of offending 
public opinion, or by personal kindness, they permitted 
him to explain his doctrines and to follow up his predi- 
cations in liberty, as they did all those who spoke in the 
name of the Lord, 

Thus, the moral precepts which formed the ground- 
work of the new doctrine could be publicly taught, with- 
out reserve or opposition. They were accepted by the 
entire population, and no one attempted to question or 
refute them. Nocircumstance is recorded in the Gospel 
indicating that the authorities enforced silence on Jesus, 
or that those who were present closed their eyes to the 
moral truths that Jesus expounded with so much au- 
thority. 

The resistance of the Jews commenced only at the 
moment when, by absolving from sin, he pretended to 
possess a power which, according to the belief of the 
Hebrew people, could pertain toGod alone. The nature 
of that resistance was neither serious nor violent, until 
the time when, wresting from its primitive sense, the 
expression “Son of God,” and imputing to it a material 
significance, Jesus positively declared that he was mi- 
raculously born of the Eternal, and that the Father and 
he were a uuzty in two persons. From that day, but from 
that day only, the adorers of the One, Only, and Invi- — 
sible God, withdrew all allegiance from him who thus 
disturbed and overthrew the fundamental dogma on the 
nature and attributes of God, made known unto them 
by the revelation at Sinai. 


128) THE DEICIDES. 


Thus, this disagreement which arose between Jesus 
and the Jews, related to the material question of the 
divinity alone; but to his doctrine, his morality, his 
sermons, they were ever ready to be submissive and 
obedient, inclined to follow his counsels, to repent of 
their faults, and, influenced by his inspired word, to do 
penance for them, as in the time of Isaiah and the other 
prophets. Of their favourable sentiments, a striking 
proof was given when John the Baptist summoned them 
to the borders of Jordan, to the baptism of repentance. 
The crowd hurried from all parts around the prophet of 
the desert. . Now, the doctrine of the latter, if we judge 
it by St. Luke’s statement of its leading maxims,* is 
certainly in no way inferior to that of the Gospels, al- 
though John the Baptist never pretended to be the Mes- 
siah, and still less to assume the name of God. 

Thus it is evident that the Jews never rejected the 
moral teachings of Jesus. On the contrary, they re- 
ceived them with such enthusiasm that when the magis- 
trates began, not without reason, to apprehend that 
fatal consequences might be produced by his passionate 
utterances, they durst not arrest Jesus, for fear of excit- 
ing the mass to rebellion, because they considered a 
prophet’s person inviolable.t 

If the Nazarene reformer had confined his mission to 
that of a prophet, he would have continued to be wel- 
comed by the whole Jewish nation, and to him would 
have been accorded, in the eyes of contemporaries and 
posterity, a permanent and splendid place among the 
seers and the celebrated doctors of the synagogue. 


III. 


THE morality which he preached was not, in truth, new 
to the Jewish people, it was that morality which, imme- 





* Luke iii. 3 and following. ° + Matthew xxi. 46. 


THE DEICIDES. * 129 


diately after the Exodus from Egypt, they had heard 
solemnly proclaimed amidst the thunder of Sinai; it was 
that morality which, during many consecutive centuries, 
had been taught by the ethical writers of Judea, David, 
Solomon, the great and the lesser prophets, Ecclesiastes 
and Ecclesiasticus, Hillel and Schammai, and all the 
elders of the Synagogue; it was that code to which, 
whenever the force of the religious and moral sentiment 
seemed to decline, the voices of their inspired teachers 
never failed to recall the children of Israel. 

For Pagan nations, the Gospel involved an infinite 
moral advance, and a real divine revelation. The day 
on which the world, which had been so long enveloped 
in material darkness, and in the excesses of depraved 
sensuality, first heard the gentle and pure voice of the 
Christian Apostles; the day when words of charity, of 
universal love, of sacrifice and of fraternity, were first 
spoken to its wondering heart, it was moved, enchanted, 
raised above its primitive nature, transported into regions 
of unknown and unexpected serenity; it hailed with de- 
light that glorious and holy light which, first kindled by 
the fires of Horeb and by the torch of the Decalogue, 
had become more radiant when clothed with the spirit- 
ualism of the prophets and the Evangelists. 

It appeared to all these nations of idolaters, seated in 
the ‘‘ shadow of death,” as though a new and mysterious 
creation was going on in the universe, and as if their 
souls had been just quickened into life. In the Pagan 
world, it was a mighty and vast transformation. The 
Gospel brought liberty to the slave; to the paria of an- 
cient times, equality and acceptance ; to the great ones 
of the earth, the sentiment of moderation and of duty; 
to all, love and brotherhood; to all, the hope of another 
life of justice and recompense. The Gospel caused the 
worship of the spiritual, and of the noblest aspirations, 
to supersede that of gross and material desires; the plu- 
rality of the ancient gods was replaced by the philosoph- 


130 * THE DEICIDES. 


ical and true idea of One Only God, Eternal, Infinite, 
Immutable, the Creator ofheaven andearth. And though 
this God had once become incarnate in a human form, 
yet it was not for the purpose of carrying off insignific- 
ant mortals, and of polluting the sanctity of the domestic 
hearth, as did the Jupiter of mythology; it was not to 
take part, as did the other Olympian divinities, in the 
bloody conflicts of mortals, which spread carnage and 
mourning around; it was, on the contrary, to redeem 
and save sinful humanity by a sublime sacrifice. ‘‘There 
are no more poor or rich, no more great or small, there 
is neither bond nor free, for ye are all one in Christ 
Jesus.’”* 

All these principles were wholly new to the Pagan 
world; they wrought a radical revolution in its very 
midst, by opening to it an endless treasure of unknown 
emotions and ideas, which were thus regarded by it asa 
superhuman revelation. We must not be surprised that . 
in the eyes of the Roman world the Gospel morality 
presented a dazzling proof of the divinity of Christianity 
and of its founder. Truly this doctrine was divine, for 
it was derived wholly and entirely from the Decalogue 
and from the prophets of Israel. The Gospels confirm 
and glorify all the precepts of reason and wisdom which 
zo to form a really righteous man, and which constitute 
the strength and the grandeur of human society. With 
good reason ancient heathenism saw and saluted therein, 
what appeared to them to be well nigh the vision of God 
himself, the revelation of His divinity in the history of 
the human race. | 

But could it have assumed the same character in the 
eyes of the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus? No, doubt- 
less it could not; for the teachings of the reformer of 
Nazareth contain nothing which all Israel had not long 
before learnt by the voices of their legislators, prophets 





* Paul’s Epistles to the Galatians. 


THE DEICIDES. ¥33 


and sages, not one of whom had ever dreamt of pro- 
claiming himself on the ground of these his utterances, 
either Messiah, or God. 

For the Roman world thus suddenly initiated by the 
Apostles and disciples of Jesus, into these resplendent 
truths, there was, and there must necessarily be, ‘‘ Chris- 
tian morality,” ‘‘ Christian charity,” “Christian virtue.” 
But for the Jews, who had for ages held and practised 
these precepts of right, there neither was, nor ever can 
be anything save ‘Israelite morality,” “Israelite chari- 
ty,” “Israelite virtue,” to be providentially disseminated 
among the people, and taught to the Gentiles by the 
bold propagators of the name and of the doctrine of 
Jesus. 

The truth of these statements will be made manifest 
by a few comparisons of the two texts; they will prove 
that what is most admired in the moral precepts of the 
Gospel belongs exclusively to, and may be proudly 
claimed by, Judaism, 


IV. 


Ir is not our purpose to apply ourselves too closely to 
this branch of enquiry. We could quote, we may truly 
say, verse by verse, and line by line, as evidence of the 
numerous instances in which the master of the Gospel 
borrowed from the Old Testament, and from the teach- 
ings of those very Pharisean doctors, who were, not- 
withstanding, the objects of his bitter resentment. The 
majority of the most admired parables were popular in 
the Jewish academies. Those which abound in the Tal- 
mud are in no way inferior in respect of purity, or moral 
elevation of thought, or picturesqueness of form, to the 
relations by which Jesus captivated the attention of his 
disciples, and by which, under the lively garb of moral 
fables, he instilled important truths into their minds. 

A practice universally adopted by the heads of the 


132 THE DEICIDES., 


schools aud the learned in Israel, was to render instruc- 
tion attractive under the form of legendary recitals. 
Jesus initiated them and very often confined himself in 
his discourses to the reproduction of old sayings which 
he re-modelled. ? 3 

A minute statement of all in the Gospel that is bor- 
rowed from the sacred writings and from the doctors 
who preceded Jesus, does not, however, form a part of 
the plan of this work. We must restrict ourselves to 
the consideration of the fundamental principles which 
chiefly characterised his morality, and invested it with 
the grandeur and authority of a divine revelation in the 
eyes of the Pagan nations. 


Let us first restore some important passages to the 
ancient law, which have been current in the world dur- 
ing the last 1,800 years, disseminated by the Gospel, and 
thus generally attributed; by public opinion, to Chris- 
tianity, although the Evangelists themselves assuredly 


had no intention of depriving the Old Testament of the 
glory of their enunciation. | 


That essential spiritual maxim, the honor of which 
was imputed by the Roman world to Christianity—“Man | 
liveth not by bread alone, but by every word that pro- 
ceedeth out of the mouth of God,’’*—was revealed and 
proclaimed not by Jesus, not by the Gospel, it is of far 
greater antiquity and of equally glorious origin; the 
great Hebrew legislator, Moses, at the very moment 
when he was to be separated for ever from his beloved 
people, pronounced it textually, and addressed to them 
the admirable farewell oration called Deuteronomy.t 


That sublime declaration, ‘“ But the just shall live_in 





* Matthew v. 4; Luke iv. 4. 
+ Deuteronomy viii. 3. ‘‘That he might make thee know 


that man doth not live by bread. IV 125 onda Oy xD °D 
DIN TM ‘TMD NvID OD Oy oD OINA 


THE DEICIDES. 133 


his faith,’ set forth by St. John,* under this form, ‘“‘He 
that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life,’ and 
which became the essential basis of the doctrine of St. 
Paulf, the true founder of Christianity, the subtle Apostle 
of the Gentiles; that axiom by which the human soul 
rises to such lofty morality belongs neither to the Gos- 
pel nor to its disseminators. The prophet Habakkukt 
is its primitive author in the brief and magnificent pro- 
phecy which the canon has preserved. 


The strange, yet singularly pious episode of the sellers 
cast out of the Temple, or the words said to have been 
uttered by Jesus on that occasion, if accepted in their 
symbolical signification, are not more truly of Gospel 
origin.| How greatly the world has, during the last 
1,800 years, used and abused this violent protest against 
the dealers in doves and other articles destined for sacri- 
fice at the door of the Temple is well known. They 
especially misapplied it to the Jews themselves, and the 
words, ‘‘ The vendors must be chased from the Temple,” 
were used as a proverb in order to justify the violence 
and persecutions of which the Israelites were victims. 
There are few who know, or condescend to remember 
that the angry words used by the son of Mary on this 
occasion, are quoted from the prophet Jeremiah, who 
uttered them reproachfully to the sinners of his time, as 
did Jesus later, in the Temple of Jerusalem, ‘This house 
which is called by my name, is become a den of robbers 
in your eyes.’’§ 





* St. John iii. 36. 
+ Paul, Epistle to the Galatians, iii. rr; Epistle to the Ro- 
mans, i. 17; Epistle to the Hebrews, x. 38. : 
¢ Habakkuk, ii. 4. “The just shall live by his faith.” pris 
MTV WWI . 

|| Matthew xxi. 12, 13. , 

§ Jeremiah vii. 11, NWI WS TT YIN TT OSD Nyon 
poy °nw 


134 | THE DEICIDES. 


“Suffer little children to come unto me,”* says Jesus, 
_ “and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God; 
and it is out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou 
hast perfected praise.t’” These last words, characteris- 
ing the spirit and the import of the beautiful maxim, 
“ Suffer little children to come unto me.” Sinite parvu- 
los venire ad me—are extracted from the book of Psalms, 
where David applies them to the glorification of the 
Eternal. 
_ The Gospel contains a remarkable parable; that of 
the good shepherd who, seeing that one of his sheep had 
_ gone astray, leaves the rest of the flock for a time and 
goes to seek it, and when he finds it, he rejoiceth more at 
that sheep, than at the ninety-nine that went not astray; 
for there is more joy in heaven for one sinner who re- 
penteth, than for ten just ones who have never gone 
astray.§ We take leave to say, without offence to the 
authors of the Gospels, that this consoling doctrine had 
long been disseminated in the Pharisean schools of Ju- 
dea, and that the Talmud cites it in terms almost identi- 
cal, as having been taught by two illustrious doctors 
among the Pharisees.f 

The quotations made from the biblical texts and from 
the works of the Synagogue sages, and the analogy ob- 
servable between them and the New Testament ought 
in no way to surprise us, when we remember that not a 
single passage is anywhere to be found in the Gospels, 
whence we can infer that Jesus purposed introducing a 
new law into Israel. 

Following the example of the Jewish doctors, he in- 
variably quoted some verse of the sacred writings in 





* Mark x. 14. + Matthew xxi. r6. 

¢ Psalms iii. 2. § Matthew xviii. 12, &c. 

7 Oty OFX OMNI Op ow ODI TIwN yaw Dip 
OW. Talmud, Traite Berachot, 34 b, et Sanhedrim, 99 a. 


. THE DEICIDES. ag 


support of the authority of his words, and even of his 
mission. | 

To him, doubtless, belong the commentaries which he 
deduced from these texts, but he always took great pains 
to connect them with the ancient law; he quoted it, he 
incessantly enforced its observance. He endeavoured, 
as did the prophets of Israel, to recall all wanderers from 
the right path to the commandments of God. He went 
after the sheep that had gone astray, in order to restore 
them io the fold; but he at the same time solemnly de- 
clared that he desired no change in the essential prin- 
ciples of Judaism. ‘Think not,” he exclaims, ‘that I 
have come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not 
come to destroy, but to fulfil, for verily I say unto 
you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall 
not pass from the law until all be fulfilled.’”* 


Therefore, when Jesus spoke thus to the people, he 
affirmed and proclaimed anew the truth, the grandeur, 
and the authority of all the moral principles contained 
in the Old Testament. He spoke to the Hebrews a lan- 
guage which they had always heard, and to which for 
ages their hearts and minds had been accustomed. The 
prophet of Nazareth, in addressing the Jewish people, 
confined himself to severe denunciations of the vices of 
high and low, to unmitigated censure of the Scribes and 
Pharisees; but the roral law of Sinai was never ques- 
tioned. Jesusextolled and ever more zealously enforced 
all the virtues already revealed to Israel by Moses, Da- 


vid and Solomon, and by the glorious constellation of 
Hebrew seers. 


It is necessary to recall two significant circumstances 
by which this principle is manifested, for they prove how 
wholly identical were the teachings of Jesus with those 
of the Pentateuch. 





* Matthew v. 17, etc. 


136 THE DEICIDES. 


One day, says the Gospel,* a young man came and 
said unto him, “Good master, what good thing shall I 
do, that I may have eternal life?” Jesus replied to him, 
“Why callest thou me good, there is none good but One, 
that is God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the 
commandments.” He saith unto him, ‘ Which?” Jesus 
said, ‘‘ Thou shalt do no murder: thou shalt not commit 
adultery ; thou shalt not steal ; thou shalt not bear false 
witness; honor thy father and thy mother; and thou 
shalt love they neighbour as thyself.” 

No Jewish doutor would have spoken differently. 
What Jesus declared to be the condition of eternal Ife 
is simply the Decalogue, in the very words of the text, 
to which he added the beautiful precept in Leviticus, 
“Love thy neighbour as thyself.’’} 

On another occasion,{ a lawyer among the Pharioées 
came and asked him this question, ‘ Master, which is the 
great commandment in the law?” Jesus said unto him, 
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.§ This is 
the first and great commandment. And the second is 
like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 
On these two commandments hang all the law and the 
prophets.” 

Thus, this was again a mere quotation from the sacred 
writings, an extract from the Pentateuch, containing in 
a few significant words, the epitome of the whole motal 
system of Mosaism. It was in fact a declaration that 
there was nothing higher than this admirable law which 
comprises in one and the same commandment, the love 
of God and the love of one’s neighBour. 





* Matthew xix. 16 and following; Mark x. 17, etc.; Luke 
Xviii. 18, ete. 

¢ 192 WN NINN) Leviticus xix. 18, 

+t Matthew xxii. 35, and the following. 

§ Deuteronomy vi. 5. 


THE DEICIDES. 137 


Thus no doubt exists as to the intentions of Jesus in 
respect of the teaching of moral truth. He sought to 
bring back those who had departed from them, to those 
great principles of the Jewish law, which he never dreamt 
of modifying. What, indeed, could he have addressed 
to the Hebrews more beautiful, more simple, and more 
evidently true, than the maxims we have just perused? 


Me 


J&sus while enjoining on his contemporaries the sacred 
precepts which’‘had formed for centuries past the basis 
of Judaism, and while summing up the moral code of 
Israel in a few salient principles, was also steadily pur- 
suing an object which placed him among the great He- 
brew reformers. 

The tendency of the Jewish Synagogue, like that of 
religious forms having a long historical existence, was to 
increase its ceremonial and its symbolism, and to multi- 
ply the outward observances, at the cost of the real spi- 
rit of religion. This tendency, which was virtually a 
formal worship, had shown itself at several periods; and 
against this, the great prophets and the celebrated 
doctors of Israel had most energetically protested. 

Thus Jesus fulfilled a lofty mission and promoted reli- 
gious morality by combating in his turn these abuses, 
and by teaching that the means of salvation did not con- 
sist in the outward practice of religion alone, but in the 
love of God and one’s fellow man; but as in regard of 
literal precept, he was only the.echo of Moses, so he was 
in respect of the spirit of that doctrine, only the follower 
of the prophets and sages of Judea. 

Who is not familiar with the admirable rebuke of 
Isaiah? “To what purpose is the multitude of your 
sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am_full of the 
burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts: and ~ 
I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of 


138 | THE DEICIDES. 


he goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath 
required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring 
no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto 
me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of as- 
semblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the 
solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed 
feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me, I am 
weary to bear them. And when you spread forth your 
hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye 
make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full 
of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil 
of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; 
learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, 
judge the fatherless; plead for the widow.’’* Jesus de- 
nounces the hypocrites who, when they fast, do'so with 
ostentation, and disfigure their faces in public ;t but how 
far is the Gospel, in this matter also, from reaching the 
sublimity of Isaiah’s invocation! { ‘‘ Wherefore have we 
fasted,” exclaims the prophet, ‘‘and thou seest not? 
Wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest 
no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find 
pleasure, and exact all your labors. Behold, ye fast for 
strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness; 
ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to 
be heard on high. Is it sucha fast that I have chosen? 
A day fora man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his 
head asa bulrush and to spread sackcloth and ashes under 
him? Wilt thou call this a fast,and an acceptable day to 
the Lord? Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to loose 
the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, 
and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every 
yoke?” By no writer have morality and worship ever 
been invested with a loftier spirituality, than they were 
by the Jewish prophets; the Gospel may have followed 





* Tsaiah i, 11, ef seq. + Matthew vi. 16. 
t Isaiah lviii. 3, and the following. re 


THE DEICIDES, 139 


in their footsteps with brilliant success, but nowhere 
does it rise above them. 

This superiority of virtue over observances, of the idea 
over the form, was expressed by the sages of the Great 
Synagogue, long before the appearance of Jesus, in the fol- 
lowing passage preserved for us by the Talmud. ‘“‘The 613 
precepts of Moses* were reduced by David to eleven.”’f 
To walk uprightly ; to speak the truth in one’s heart, not 
to backbite with the tongue, not to injure one’s neigh- 
bour, not to take up a reproach against one’s neigh- 
bour, to despise what is despicable, to honour those who 
fear the Lord; not to lend on usury, (and here the Tal- 
mud adds, ‘not even unto a stranger,’ »45)) and to take 
no bribe against the innocent.” 

Isaiah subsequently reduces them to six. ‘‘To keep 
judgment, to walk in the path of virtue, to keep one’s 
hand from doing any evil, to close one’s ears to acts of 
violence, and to shut one’s eyes in order not to behold 
vice.”’{} Micah reduces them to three; ‘‘to do justice, 
to love mercy, and to wakx humbly before God.’’§ Isaiah 
again reduces them to two; “to do justice, and to love 
mercy.’}. Finally Habakkuk sums them up in these 
words: *‘ The just shall live by his faith.’ _ 

We perceive how greatly the simplification and the 
spiritualisation of the moral Code became active in the 
ancient Synagogue, and in the thoughts of those Pharisee 
sages of whom the Gospel has given us so incorrect a 
description. In acircumstance resembling that in which 
Jesus had expressed in synthetical terms, the fundamental 





* In enumerating all the negative and affirmative preeepts 
which are found in the Pentateueh. this number of 613 was 
reached, and formed what the Hebrew sages term the 613 pre- 
cepts of Moses. 

{ These principles of David are taken from the rsth Psalm. 

t Isaiah lv. § Micah ~i. 8. | Isaiah lvi. 1. 
 ¥& Habakkuk ii. 4. - All the texts we have quoted above are 
to be found in the Talmud, Treatise Maccoth, fol. xxiv. recto. 


140 THE DEICIDES. 


characteristics of Jewish law and morality, the illustrious 
Hillel, one ofthe grandest personages among the doctors 
of the second temple, made a similar reply to a heathen 
who enquired in what the law of Israel consisted. ‘‘ Do 
not unto others that, which thou wouldest not that they 
should do unto thee. This is the essence of the law, the 
rest is only commentary.’’* 


And as we are thus again led to speak of the opinions 
of these Pharisean doctors who were so ill used by Jesus, 
let us here declare once for all, who were those, against 
whom were directed these violent rebukes, which found 
acceptance, not only with the people, but with the Pha- 
risees themselves. The great reformer of Nazareth spoke 
not to the revered doctors and true sages of phariseism, 
to disciples of Shammai, or Hillel, to the illustrious 
fathers of the Synagogue; he spoke to the hypocrites, 
who, according to his words, “ bound heavy burdens and 
grievous to be borne, and laid them on men’s shoulders; 
but they themselves would not move them with one cf 
their fingers. But all their works they do for to be seen 
of men ; they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge 
the borders of their garments, who pay tithes of mint and 
anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier mat- 
ters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith. For ye are 
like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beauti- 
ful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and 
of all uncleanness.”’t 


The contempt expressed by the rabbins of Israel, for 
the Pharisean hyprocrites was not less profound than that 
felt by Jesus, when he uttered his vehement, true, and 
withering denunciations. Let us examine the Code of 
Phariseeism, the doctrine of the Talmud sages on this 
subject: 





* Talmud, Treatise Shabboth, ch. ii. 
+ Matthew xxiii. passim. 


THE DEICIDES. IAI 


“There are seven classes of Pharisees,” they say in 
their figurative language; “(1) the broad shouldered; 
they inscribe their actions on their back, in order that 
they may be honored by men; (2) Stumblers; who tra- 
verse the streets, dragging their feet after them, and 
stumbling over the stones in order to attract attention ; 
(3) the head strikers; those shut their eyes, in order, as 
they pretend, not to see women, and strike their heads 
against a wall; (4) the lowly strengthened ; who walk bent 
double; (5) the calculating Pharisees ; those who observe 
the law for the sole object of receiving the rewards there- 
in promised ; (6) those moved by fear; who do good from 
the fear of punishment only; (7) those influenced by a 
sense of duty, The last mentioned are the pious.” 


Rabbi Nachaman says on this subject, ‘“‘The supreme 
tribunal will duly punish hypocrites who wrap their ta- 
leth around them to appear, while they are not, true 
Pharisees.” 


“Fear not true Pharisees,” said their arch-persecutor 
Alexander Jannee, when dying, to his wife, ‘ neither fear 
those who are not (his friends the Sadducees); but on 
the contrary fear greatly painted Pharisees (those who 
are not, but who wish to appear Pharisees).’’* t 


At all periods and in all religions there have been 
“painted Pharisees,” according to the expression of 
Alexander Jannee, they exist even in our day. Tartuffes 
and hypocrites who conceal their passions and vices 
under the sacred cloak of religion, were not and are not 
found in Judea alone. But the true Pharisees, the great 
moralists to whom we are indebted for this fine treatise 





* This important passage is taken from the Talmud, Treatise 
Sota, xxii. verso. The expression “painted Pharisees” has 
some analogy with the “ whited sepulchres” spoken of by Jesus. 

+ See Babylonian Talmud, Treatise Sota, Folio 22 A. Also 
Buxtorf Lexicon Talmudicum. (Translator.) 


142 THE DEICIDES. 


“Maxims of the Fathers,’’* did not wait till Jesus ap- 
peared to cast severe censure on the false devotees of 
their epoch. On this subject again, the Master of the 
Gospel had but to recall their powerful expressions and 
to translate them into his own individual words. 





* A treatise on morals, preserved in the Talmud, and con- 
sisting of aphorisms uttered by the sages of the Great Synago- 
gue (Ayan f\DID wa AN). The illustrious doctors who taught 
during the existence of the Second Temple, are thus designated 
and their precepts are second to those of .no other moralist ; 
they are, above all, remarkable for their eminently social and 
practical character, 3 


THE DEICIDES, 143 


ELEVENTH BOOK. 


Sermon on the Mount—Analogy between its teachings and 
those of the Holy Scriptures—Form adopted by the final 
editors of this Sermon—Aim they had in view—Similarity 
between the Sermon on the Mount and various passages of 
the Bible and of the Hebrew sages—Anger—Evil desire— 
Retaliation—Hatred of an enemy—Alms—Prayer—Treasures 
of Heaven—Trust in God—Not to judge others—Summary. 


I, 


THE moral doctrine of Jesus is comprehensively set forth 
in the celebrated sermon which he pronounced in Gali- 
lee, when seated amid his disciples, on the summit of a 
hill, around which the people had gathered intent on 
hearing the words of the young rabbi. This beautiful 
sermon, which has reached us under the traditional 
name of “The Sermon on the Mount,” virtually consists 
of a few simple and clear aphorisms calculated to show 
the literal sense of the text perspicaciously to explain 
the true spirit of Israelitish law and morality, as they 
had ever been taught by the spiritual teachers of the 
chosen people. Of this, an analysis of the words of Je- 
sus, and a few close verbal comparisons will furnish 
ample proof. 


“ Blessed are the poor in spirit,”’ exclaimed the doctor 
of Nazareth, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. 
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. 
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righte- 


144 THE DEICIDES. 


ousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merci- 
ful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure 
in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peace- 
makers, for they shall be called the children of God. 
Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness’ 
sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 


And he added, ‘“‘Ye have heard it was said by them of 
old time, Thou shalt not kill, but I say unto you that 
whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause, 
shall be in danger of the judgment. Ye have heard that 
it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not commit 
adultery, but I say unto you that whosoever looketh at 
a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery already 
with her in his heart. Again, ye have heard that it has 
been said of them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear 
thyself, but I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by 
heaven, for it is God’s throne; nor by the earth, for it is 
His footstool; neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of 
the great King. Ye have heard it has been said, An 
eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto you, 
That ye resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee 
on thy right cheek, turn the other also. Ye have heard 
that it has been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbourand 
hate thine enemy, but I say unto you, Love your ene- 
mies, and do good to them that hate you. But when 
thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy 
right hand doeth, that thy alms may be in secret. When 
thou prayest, pray in silence; but when ye pray, do not 
use vain repetitions, as the heathens do. Lay not up 
for yourselves treasures upon the earth, but lay up for 
yourselves treasures in heaven. Take no thought for 
your life, what you shall eat, and what you shall drink. 
Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do 
they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Fa- 
ther feedeth them. Take no heed therefore of the mor- 
row, for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have 


THE DEICIDES. 145 


need of all these things.* Judge not, that ye be not 
judged. Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that 
men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is 
the law and the prophets.’’t 

Such are the fundamental and textual pitiaiples of 
this authoritative discourse, which rightfully became the 
type of Gospel morality. Judaism has the right to affirm 
that these great principles of fraternity, charity and faith 
are its inalienable possession, and that after and in spite 
of all the iniquities of which it had been the victim, it 
may well be deemed a glory for this faith that, by the 
intervention of Jesus and his disciples, it bestowed on 
the world all the purest and sublimest*elements of the 
moral code of Sinai. But when these glorious teachings 
were presented to it on the mount, where apostles and 
people eagerly listened to the words of the new master, 
that world must have received them without astonish- 
ment, and have seen in them nought save the uninter- 
rupted traditional ethics of the sages of Israel. The sen- 
timents of surprise and admiration with which the teach- 
ings of the son of Mary were received were excited more 
by the man than by the doctrine.{ ‘Whence has this 
man so much wisdom ?” exclaimed the crowd. “Is not 
this the carpenter’s son?” And in truth, what novelty, 
what fresh revelation could there be in the eyes of the 
Jews, in the precepts we have just quoted ? 


II. 


THE first point worthy of remark is the scrupulous care 
with which Jesus in this sermon connects his teaching 





* The famous passage “ First cast out the beam out of thine 
own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote 
out of thy brother’s eye,” is in the sermon on the mount, the, 
corollary and the development of this precept. Matthew vii. 5, 

+ The entire sermon on the mount fills the chapters v., vi. 
and vii. of the Gospel according to St. Mattew. 

¢ Matthew xiii. 54, 55. 


146 THE DEICIDES., 


with that of the whole of Judaism. At the very opening 
of this discourse, we read the solemn declaration, “Think 
not that I have come to destroy this law or the prophets; 
Iam not come to destroy, but to fulfil.’’* 

The son of Mary was a Jew, had been taught all the 
precepts of the Hebrew faith, and his genius or his in- 
spiration had led him especially to select all that is most 
beautiful in holy writ; but he at the same time pro- 
claimed, as he himself so forcibly declared, the eternity 
and immutability of the commandments contained in the 
law, and his habitual expression when setting forth any 
great moral principle was this, Bivkioeyt: is the law and the 
prophets.”’t : 

However, the final editors of this béautiful sermon on 
the mount were not so scrupulous as was their master, 
in continually asserting the analogy between his teach- 
ings and the doctrine of the sacred writers. It is probable 
that at the time when the Gospels were colated, the 
Apostles had previously abandoned that Judea which 
had shown itself so hostile to their attempts at proselyt- 
ism, in order to undertake the conversion of the Gen- 
tiles.| Having thus wholly severed themselves from Ju- 
-daism, they had no longer any motive to induce a belief 
that the principles of the doctrine which they sought to 
diffuse had been borrowed from the Jewish sacred books; 
on the contrary, they must have striven to cause the 
Gospel to be regarded as a radical innovation, as a total 
subversion of the order of ideas pertaining to the Old 
Testament. The singular, and it may be said somewhat 
disingenuous form given.to the sermon on the mount, 
must be in fact attributed to the presence of this in- 
tention. 





* Matthew v. 17. + Ibid. vii. 12. 

t The Gospels were written in Greek, a fact which clearly 
proves that they were composed wholly for Pagan people, and 
not for Jews, since Hebrew was at that time still the national 
language of the Israelites, 


THE DEICIDES., 147 


Those who read it without having previously acquired 
an intimate knowledge of the Old Testament, deduce 
from it the conviction that the Jews practice but a ne- 
gative morality; that they were even instructed to en- 
courage sentiments of hatred towards all other men, and 
that Jesus alone introduced into the world principles of 
toleration, fraternity, mercy, charity, and affirmative vir- 
tue.. “Ye have heard that it has been said by them of 
old,” exclaimed the reformer of Nazareth at the com- 
mencement of every important sentence, ‘but I, I say 
unto you.” A belief is thus generated that all is new in 
the evangelical doctrines, and that the Gospel thus in- 
voked is an entire and striking rupture between the old 
and the new law. And what is more, the editors of the 
Gospel, not satisfied with possessing themselves with 
the uncounted moral treasures of the Synagogue, with- 
out indicating the ancient source whence they were 
drawn, sought also to vilify the ancient law, by imputing 
to it maxims opposed to the simplest notions of charity 
and virtue. Thus in the Sermon on the Mount we find 
this flagrant accusation: ‘‘ You have heard that it was 
said, Love your neighbour, and hate your enemy, but I 
say unto you, etc.,”’ an accusation which may be ‘justly 
designated as a wholesale and indefensible calumny, as 
we shall soon have occasion to show, by means of some 
incontrovertible texts. These brief observations suffice 
to indicate the spirit by which the editors of the Gospel 
were animated ; they wished to appear as religious in- 
novators in the eyes of the Pagan peoples. They desired 
in some degree to evince to the Gentiles, the necessity 
of a second divine revelation, destined to give a new 
sense and a new direction to the ancient law. The mo- 
ment is at length come when the truth on this subject 
must be declared, a truth long obscured by hostile pas- 
sion, and when its true parentage and its true name must 
be restored to Christian morality, as it was enunciated 
by the son of Mary, by the name of Morality of Israel. 


148 ‘THE DEICIDES. 


III. 


“BLESSED are the poor in spirit,” exclaimed Jesus upon 
the mountain. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall 
inherit the earth. Blessed are they that mourn. Blessed 
are the peacemakers,”’ etc. 

“The Lord preserveth the simple,” the royal Psalmist 
had said before him.* “ Honour shall. uphold the humble 
in spirit; thus said the sublime author of the Book of 
Proverbs. t 

“The meek shall inherit the earth,” King David adds.t 
“The Lord giveth grace unto thé lowly,” Solomon re- 
peats.{{ “He that followeth after righteousness and 
mercy, findeth life, righteousness and honour.” § 

«‘Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren 
to dwell together in unity,’’]| exclaims the sweet singer 
of Israel. ‘‘Love peace and pursue it at any cost,” said 
Hillel to his disciples,1 thus reproducing the maxim of 
the Psalmist, ‘‘Seek peace and pursue it.’’** 

And the master of the Gospel continues in these 
words, “‘ Blessed be those who are persecuted for righte- 
ousness’ sake.” 

“Remember that it is better to be persecuted than to 
persecute,’’*** preached the doctors of the Synagogue in 
their turn, with expressive brevity. 

Jesus continued, saying to his disciples, ‘‘You have 
heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt 
not kill; but I say unto you that whosoever is angry 





* -— ONND Ww Psalm cxvi. 6. 


+ Proverbs xx1x. 23. t Psalm xxxvii. It. 
tt Proverbs iii. 34. § Ibid. xxi. 21. 
| Psalm cxxxiii. I. @ Pirke-Aboth 1. 12, 


** Psalm xxxiv. 14. 
#8 Edy 1M p’35373m) Derech Eretz Rab, ii. 


THE DEICIDES. 149 


with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of 
the judgment.” 

Solomon said, ‘‘ Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry, 
for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.”* ‘ Banish from 
thy heart anger and strife.’’t 

In the admirable book of Ecclesiasticus, written by 
Jesus the son of Sirach, occur these words, “ Forgive 
thy neighbour the hurt that he hath done unto thee, so 
shall thy sins also be forgiven when thou prayest. One 
man beareth hatred against another, and doth he seek 
pardon from the Lord? He showeth no mercy to a 
man, which is like himself, and doth he ask forgiveness 
of his own sins? Remember the commandments, and 
bear no malice to thy neighbour.** Finally, the Phari- 
sees, so bitterly denounced by Jesus, said, ‘“‘ Be not prone 
to anger.” tt ‘‘When a man indulges in anger, if he is a 
sage he loses his reason, if a prophet the spirit of pro- 
phecy departeth from him.” “The friend of God is he 
who yieldeth not to anger, who presents an example of 
humility.”’] 

The sermon on the mount thus continues, “Ye have 
heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt 
not commit adultery ; but I say unto you that whoever 
looketh on a woman to lust after her has already com- 
mitted adultery with her in his own heart.” 

O immortal Decalogue! even before Jesus spoke, didst 





* Ecclesiastes vii. 9. + Ibid. 

** Ecclesiasticus xxviii. 3, etc. 

++ This expression is almost the literal reproduction of what 
Jesus said at the conclusion of the passage above quoted. Af- 
ter the exhortation not to yield to anger, the Gospel adds, 
“ Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there remem- 
berest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy 
gift before the altar and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy 
brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” Matthew v. 
- }{ Perke-Abothii. 10. § Talmud, Treatise Pesachim, 67, col. 2. 


9 


150 <THE DEICIDES. 


thou not proclaim this sublime exhortation, “Thou shalt 
not covet they neighbour's wife, thou shalt not covet thy 
neighbour’s house, nor his man-servant, nor his maid- 
servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy 
neighbour’s?* ‘The expression itself employed by the 
master of the Gospels was one of frequent recurrence in 
the teachings of the sages of Judza. ‘He,’ say they, 
“who looks upon a woman with impure intention, has, 
it may be said in so doing, committed adultery.’’t 


And when Jesus, developing this moral precept, pro- 
claims the sanctity and indissolubility of the marriage 
tie, except in cases of adultery,t what does he affirm 
others than did Eliezar, when he declared that the altar 
sheds tears on the conduct of the man who repudiates 
his wife.§ Jesus connects the sanctity of marriage almost 
immediately with the sanctity of an oath. “Again, ye 
have heard that it has been said by them of old time, 
Thou shalt not forswear thyself; but I say_unto you, 
Swear not at all, neither by heaven, for it is God’s throne, 
nor by earth, for it is His footstool, no by Jerusalem, 
nor by thy head.” 


“Accustom not they mouth to swearing,” said Jesus 
the son of Sirach, “neither use thyself to the naming of 
the Holy One. Let not the name of God be continually 
in they mouth. A man that useth much swearing shall 
be filled with iniquity, and the plague shall never depart 
from his house.”’| And long before the son of Sirach 
wrote, these words were to be read in the Decalogue, 





py NWS TM x5 Exodus xx.; Deuteronomy v. 21. 
4 Sx 29ND mIND3 NwKD YonDDM 4D Talmud Mas. 
sechet Kallah. 
¢ Sermon on the Mount, Matthew v. 31, 32. 
§ Talmud, Treatise Sanhedrim, 22a. 
| Ecclesiasticus xxiii. 9, and the following. 


— 


THE DEICIDES. rey 


“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in 
vain.* | 

And here at this point, occurs a passage in the autho- 
ritative sermon of Jesus which has always been con- 
sidered as involving a maxim of the highest morality 
and human self-abnegation. ‘Render not eye for eye, 
tooth for tooth, blow for blow, as it was said unto you 
by those of old,” cries the prophet of Nazareth; “but re- 
sist not evil ; whoever shall smite thee on the left check, turn 
to him the right one also,” 

There is much to be said as to the true signification 
of this law of retaliation, which has served as matter of 
such grave reproach against Mosaism, but which is in 
fact the simple application, under a particular form, of 
the great social principle that the punishment should be 
proportionate to the crime.t But this investigation is 





* Exodus xx.; Deuteronomy v. 

+ An Israelite rabbin thus expresses himself, in his interest- 
ing studies on the Pentateuch, as to blows and wounds :— 

““Hebrew legislation enacted that the compensation was to 
be by damages equal to the injuries inflicted. Tooth for tooth, 
eye for eye, hand for hand, say the Scriptures. This does not 
mean that a tooth was to be extracted, an eye put out, or the 
hand cut off of the person who had been guilty of such crimes ; 
the law of retaliation would have been, in such a case, nothing 
but a monstrous iniquity, had any certainty been possible of 
inflicting on the one, exactly the same injury as had been re- 
ceived by the other. And if the criminal had previously acci- 
dentally lost one eye or one hand, is it to be supposed that his 
only hand was to be cut off, or his only eye put out? Such a 
course, from the excess and inequality of the punishment, 
would have manifestly been a violation of this law of retalia- 
tion itself. Besides, what advantage could possibly accrue to 
the one who had been mutilated from the mutilation inflicted 
on his adversary? Combined with the pain he had suffered, 
he would have had but the regret of having taken a useless re- 
venge, he would“have left the court of justice with his wound, 


¥52 THE DEICIDES. 


not here necessary; it suffices for us to ascertain whether . 
this exhortation by Jesus, which has been set forth as 
the acme of moral perfection—whether this extreme dis- 





without the slightest solace to cancel its remembrance. The 
law of retaliation thus understood would have been simply a 
savage absurdity. Several contributors to the Talmud (which 
work has supplied us with the preceding reflections), who were 
_ contemporaries of the administration of the Mosaic law, inform 
us besides, that the law of retaliation was never thus interpreted 
or executed. 

“The law involved a complete system of compensation. 
Tooth for tooth and eye for eye signify merely a restoration to 
him to whom they are owing of his tooth or his eye, or as nearly 
as possible, of what is an equivalent to them. Every man has 
a fixed value, this value is diminished by mutilation ; let him 
who has inflicted the injury restore the value to him who has 
regeived it, and let him give in money the cost of his cure and 
of-+his enforced inaction. After this method, the law really en- 
forced a compensation for the injury occasioned. 

“This system of compensation was applied in the most varied 
circumstances. If an apprentice was wounded by his master, 
his liberty was immediately restored to him. If a pregnant 
woman received a violent blow, the husband summoned the 
guilty before a court of justice, by which he was sentenced to 
pay afine. The law is explicit on this point. If an animal in- 
flicted a wound, its owner was responsible for the consequen- 
ces; and if he had been warned several times and the said ani- 
mal caused a person’s death, he might, in expiation of his care- 
lessness, have to forfeit his life. If any one opened a well 
without covering it and caused any accident, if any depredation 
was committed on property, the law of retaliation enacted com- 
pensation. If an ox was stolen from its owner, the thief was _ 
condemned to return five oxen. Again, this was the law of re- 
taliation ; the Hebrews were agriculturists; to steal an ox was 
to inflict a great loss on the labourer, because, in addition to 
the loss of the ox was that of his labour, and full restitution 
was enforced. Only four sheep are returned for one stolen, as 
that animal is of less value to the agriculturist. He who stole 


, 


THE DEICIDES. 153 


paragement—this entire reversal of the moral principle 
of the law of retaliation is truly his own work, or whether 
in this, as in so many other precepts, he was simply the 
imitator of the Bible and of the Pharisean sages: that 
the reply must here be in the affirmative is not doubtful. 

The principle of not resisting violence is laid down in 
the Lamentations of Jeremiah,* in terms almost textually 
identical with those of the Gospels. 

The prophet, in presenting the portrait of a just man, 
_ of one who, resting in the Lord, tranquilly awaits His 





anything that had been lent to him, returned only twice as much 
to the owner. Again retaliation; a thing or an animal which 
was lent is always less useful than one retained, thus compen- 
sation in this instance is trifling. 

“A final application of the celebrated law may here be ad- 
duced. It is, that by the important duty which the seducer is 
compelled to fulfil, that of becoming the husband of the young 
girl whom he has deceived, he restores to her her honour by a 
marriage which is henceforth to be indissoluble ; for had divorce 
been permitted, the compensation secured by virtue of this law 
would have been too easily rendered void. 

‘Such then is the law of retaliation, which has furnished so 
many arguments against Israelite legislation, because it has been 
understood according to the letter by the very persons who 
most reproach the Jews with neglecting the spirit of Scripture. 
This law may be distinctly expressed in these words, Every 
one should endeavour, as much as lies in his power, to repair 
the injury which he has occasioned.” | 

The passage we have just quoted is extracted from an im- 
portant work by R. Astruc, Assistant Rabbi to the Chief Rabbi 
at Paris (now at Brussels), entitled ‘“‘Studies on the Penta- 
teuch,” published in “Israelite Truth,” the year 1860, the fifth 
number. Consult also on this subject the splendid work of 
Judah Ben Halevy, ‘The Khosari,” book iii. §§ 46, 47; and J. 
Salvador, “The Institutions of Moses and of. the Hebrew 
people.” 

* Lamentations iii, 25 to 30. 


TT | THE DEICIDES. 


help and bears the yoke thrown around his neck by 
others, adds, as a last effort of persecuted virtue, ‘“‘ He 
giveth his cheek to him who smiteth him.” Never was 
there a more striking and expressive metaphor. 

The author of Proverbs says, ‘Say not thou, I will 
recompense evil; but wait on the Lord, and He shall 
save thee.” * . 

“Say not, I will do so to him as he doeth unto me; 
I will render to the man according to his work.’’f 

“He that revengeth shall find revenge in the Lord, 
and He will surely keep his sins in remembrance.’ } 

Here we have the doctrine of the Pharisees on this 
point. 

Of those who suffer without returning injuries, and of 
those who accept insults without replving to them, the 
prophet speaks when he says, ‘“‘The friends of God shall 
shine like the sun, when he arises in all his glory.’’§ 

If thy companions call thee an ass, put the saddle on 
thy back, says another Pharisean Doctor, in Janguage 
as figurative as that of the Gospel, in order to indicate 
that you should pardon injuries and give an sai of 
humility. 

In following the successive passages of the sermon on 
the mount, which has been for the last 1,800 years the 
moral manifesto of Christianity, we meet this serious in- 
junction expressed by Jesus, ‘‘ Ye have heard that it has 
been said of old time, ‘Thou shalt-love thy neighbour 
and hate thine enemy,’ but I say unto you, love your 
enemies, and do good to those who hate you.” 

Assuredly, this was not said by the contemporaries of 
Moses, by them who had heard this solemn exhortation, 





* Proverbs xx. 22. ¢ Proverbs xxiv. 29. 
_ t Ecclesiasticus xxviii 1. . 

§ wr PI) NBD NIN Pp TIN Talmud, Treatise loma, 
23, col. 1. 

| Talmud, Treatise Baba Kama, 87. 


>. 


THE DEICIDES. res 


Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;* thy neigh- 
bour, that is to say, all men, and not thy friends only, 
as the editors of the Gospel assert, thus falsifying the 
text and the spirit of this beautiful precept of ig aed 
and love.’’t 





* Leviticus xix. £8. 

+ Our learned co-religionist, M. Munk, has devoted serious 
attention to the investigation of the mode by which the Gospel 
writers were led to make this strange perversion, which is be- 
sides manifestly opposed to the doctrine of Jesus. In fact, the 
master of the Gospels more than once quotes the great moral 
precept of Leviticus, and always applies it to fellow-men in ° 
general, and not exclusively to friends. M. Munk observes 3 
that by translating incorrectly the word )) (neighbour) “friend,” . 
the Gospel was betrayed into this conclusion @ contrario that _ 
we are enjoined to fate our enemy. (“Reflections on the Wor- 
ship of the Ancient Hebrews,” Caheu’s Bible, t. iv.) 

A characteristic episode in the Gospel indicates the very gen- 
eral signification attached by the Pharisean doctors to the word - 
“neighbour,” which, according to their view, as well as to that 
of Jesus, comprehended all mankind. 

“A lawyer,” says St. Luke (x. 25), “asked Jesus, Master, what 
shall I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus replied, What is writ- 
ten in the law? Howreadest thou? And he answering said, 
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all 
thy strength, and with all thy mind. This do and thou shalt 
live. But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And 
who is my neighbour? And Jesus answering said, A certain 
man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among 
thieves, which stripped him of his raiment and wounded him, 
and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there 
came down a certain priest that way, and when he saw him he 
passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he 
was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on 
the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came 
where he was, and when he saw him he had compassion on 
him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in 
oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him 


156 THE DEICIDES. 


Again, this was not said by the Author of the admir- 
able Pentateuch, in which we read, ‘‘Thou shalt not hate 
thy brother in thine heart, thou shalt not avenge nor 
bear any grudge, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as 
thyself.’’* 

“If thou meet thine enemy’s oxor his ass going astray, 
thou shalt surely bring it back to him again. If thou 
seest the ass of him who hateth thee lying under his 
burden, and dost forbear to help him, +hou shalt surely 
help him.’’t 

Neither could the wise Solomon, who said, “If thine 
enemy be hungry give him bread to eat, and if he be 
thirsty, give him water to drink.{ Rejoice not when 
thine enemy faileth, and let not thine heart be glad when 
he stumbleth.§ Hate stirreth up strife, but love covereth 
up all sins’’] have taught to the Hebrews these pretended 
precepts of hatred and vengeance. 

Neither was it the sublime Psalmist, when he pro- 
nounced this beautiful maxim, “‘We must not hate the 
wicked, but wickedness;’7 when he exclaimed, “O my 
God, if I have ever rewarded evil for evil, yea, I have 
delivered him who was, without cause, mine enemy.”** 

Neither was it pious Job, who said in the midst of his 





to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow, when he » 
departed, he took out two pence and gave them to the host, 
and said unto him, Take care of him, and whatsoever thou 
' spendest more, when I come again I will repay thee. Which 
now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him 
that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that showed 
mercy unto him. Go, and do thou likewise.” 

The Pharisees also accepted the word neighbour and the 
duties aitached to it in its widest and most generous sense. 


* Leviticus xix. 17, 18. + Exodus xxiii. 4, 5. 
¢t Proverbs xxv. 21. § Ibid. xxiv. 17. 
| Ibid. x. 12. { Psalm— 


** Psalm vii. 4, 5. 


THE DEICIDES. 157. 


affliction, “If I rejoice at the destruction of him that 
hateth me,” or, ‘I lifted up myself when evil found 
him.’”* 

Neither was it the wise author of Ecclesiasticus, that 
Jesus the son of Sirach, between whom and the son of 
Mary there exists so much affinity, when he Said “ Re- 
joice not over thy greatest enemy being dead.’’t 

Neither was it the sages of Phariseeism, one of the 
most illustrious of whom, Samuel the younger,{ enjoined 
his disciples not to desire the misfortune of an enemy, 
and not to rejoice at his downfall. 

Thus the traditions of Israel were wholly uniform in 
respect of this great moral question. Nor from the very 
first period of the exodus from Egypt, to that of the 
doctors of the Synagogue who preceded Jesus, did it 
vary in the slightest degree. The Jewish law never pre- 
scribed hatred of an enemy; on the contrary, in a long 
series of touching precepts, it ever insisted on the re- 
turning good for evil; it ever forbade the fostering in 
the heart of any sentiment of animosity, of any desire 
for revenge. And when Jesus said in his turn, ‘Do 
good unto those who hate you,” he was but the echo 
and the reproducer of the doctrine revealed by God Him- 
self to the Hebrew people, and obeyed with pious fidelity 
by all the righteous in Israel. 

The pardon of injuries, and good will and love to- 
wards those who have injured us, are but some of the 
many forms assumed by charity. But benevolence has 
another and no less elevated aim; the alleviation of the 
misery of others, to give alms and assistance intelligently 
and opportunely to the poor, is one of the first duties of 
mankind, as it is one of the noblest manifestations of 
primitive fraternity. Jesus evidently could add nothing 
to the admirable ordinances concerning the exercise of 





* Job xxxi. 29. + Ecclesiasticus viii. 8. 
t Perke-Aboth iv. 27. 


158 THE DEICIDES. 


charity, contained in Mosaism and the writings of the 
Hebrew doctors, 

It is universally known that the inspired author of the 
Pentateuch gave a prominent place to beneficence among 
the highest social duties, and that he set apart, with 
touching solicitude, an important share of the products 
of the earth for the poor, the fatherless, and the widow.* . 

In the sacred language, charity has a name which 
eloquently expresses the religious duty pertaining to it, - 
justice Npww; and the exercise of the virtue is placed in 
all the books of Holy Writ, above all other duties. 
“Charity saves from eternal death.’”’ ‘‘Whoso stoppeth 
his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself 
ana not be heard,’’f declares the wise Solomon. 

“What I require of you in the name of the Eternal, 
exclaims the prophet Isaiah, is it not to deal thy bread 
to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are 


cast out to thy house?” ‘When thou seest the naked 
that thou cover him, and to console him who is afflic- 
ted." :T 


“Whoso giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord,’’§ 
teaches the author of Proverbs. 
“The poor shall be as sons in ees house,” ] say the 


- Pharisean doctors. 


“Give unto him who is poor the best dish of your 
table, and to him who is naked the best of your gar- 
ments,’ was prescribed inits turn by the traditional mo- 
rality of Judea. Jesus could say nothing more and noth- 
ing better in reference to charity, but he expresses this 





* See principally on this head the remarkable precepts of 
Deuteronomy xxiv., xxv. and xxvi., as well as the splendid 
prayer given in the last mentioned chapter, 13 and following 
verses. 

+ Proverbs xxi. 13. t Isaiah Iviii. 7. 

8 Proverbs xix. 17. 54 pn =moD 

| Perke-Aboth, i. { Yoreh Deah, 247, 6. 


THE DEICIDES. 159 


pious duty, “Give alms in secret, and let not your left 
hand know what your right doeth.” 

Glorious and holy maxim on which one cannot ponder 
too long, but which others in Israel had equally pro- 
claimed before the advent of the prophet of Nazareth. 

“Shut up alms in the heart of the poor, and it will 
pray forthee. Shut up alms in thy storehouses, and it 
shall deliver thee from all affliction. I shall fight for 
thee against thine enemies better than a mighty shield 
and strong spear.” * 

“He who giveth alms in secret is greater ‘tian Moses 
himself,” say the Pharisean doctors. 

Israelitish morality recognises eight degrees of charity.f 

The first and noblest is that of a man who supports 
the poor before his fall, either by gifts, by loans, or by 
institutions, in order to prevent his sinking into want 
and misery. 

The second degree is that of the man who giveth with- 
out knowing and without being known. 

The third degree is that of the man who knows the ~ 
poor to whom he gives, but is not known by them. Thus 
did the sages; they secretly threw purses of money into 
the dwellings of the poor. 

The fourth degree is that of the man who is known by 
the beggar, but to whom the recipient is unknown. 

The fifth degree is that of the man who delivers alms, 
without being asked, from hand to hand. 

The sixth degree is that of the man who does not give 
until he is asked. 

The seventh degree is.that of the man who gives less . 
than he ought without real kindness. 





* Ecclesiasticus xxix. 15, 16. 
#9299 NwoD 972 IND’ Mpry Awiy R. Samcai saw some 
one give a poor man money in public, and said “It is as well 


not to give as to give ostentatiously and openly.” Talmud, 
Treatise Chaguiga, I. 


160 ILHE DEICIDES. 


Lastly, the lowest degree in the scale of charity is that 
of the man who gives with ill-temper and regret.* 

We thus see that the Jewish doctors were not less ex- 
plicit than the Gospel, in respect of secret charity, and 
that the sermon on the mount may have reiterated, but 
could not surpass, the great principles enforced by them. 

“When thou prayest, continues the son of Mary, thou 
shalt not pray as the heathens do; for they think that 
they shall be heard for their much speaking.” 

“It is better,’ say the Pharisees, “to utter a short 
prayer with devotion, than a long one without fervour.’’t 

“Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where 
neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves 
do not break through and steal.” 

In Ecclesiasticus we find an identical expression ut- 
tered by Jesus son of Sirach.t 

“Lay up thy treasures according to the command- 
ments of the Most High, and it shall bring thee greater 
profit than gold.” 

I desire, said a Pharisean doctor, to amass inexhaus- 
tible treasure, while my fathers sought the perishable 
treasures of this world.§ 

“Therefore, I say unto you,” concludes the Gospel, 
“take no thought for your life what ye shall eat, or what 
ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put 
on. Behold the fowls of the air, your Heavenly Father 
feedeth them, and causeth the lilies of the field to grow, 
for He knoweth that ye have need of these things. Take, 
therefore, no thought of the morrow. Seek ye first the 
kingdom of God, for all these things shall be given you 
in abundance.” 

This exclusive confidence in the goodness of God, this 





* T. Yoreh Deah, 249. 

+ Talmud, Treatise Scabbath, 10, and Treatise Menachoth, 
TIO. 

¢} Ecclesiasticus, xxix. 14. § Talmud, Baba Bathra. 


THE DEICIDES. 161 


placing man’s destiny wholly in the hands of the Lord 
of heaven and earth, this unlimited hope in Him who 
calls into existence and sustains all created beings, are 
the ever present themes of the Royal Psalmist’s inspira- 
tion. All the songs of David, without exception, breathe 
this deep trust in the providence of the Eternal. 

But even the expression employed by Jesus, “Seek ye 
first the kingdom of God, for those things shall be given 
you,’ occurs word for word in the Psalms. “Fear ye 
the Lord, O ye his saints, for there is no want for them 
‘that fear Him,” exclaims the royal prophet. ‘“‘ The young 
lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they that seek the 
Loré shall not want any good thing.’’* 

“The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous to 
famish.”’t 

“Ts it not He who giveth food to all flesh?’ { “Thou 
openest Thy hand and satisfiest the desire of every liv- 
ing thing.§ He giveth to the beast his food, and to the 
young raven that cries.”’| 

‘Stand still,” said Moses to the Hebrew people, be- 
fore any of these prophets, ‘and hold your peace, for 
the Lord shall fight for you.” 1 

“He,” say the Pharisean sages, “who, having but a 
piece of bread in his basket says, ‘What shall I eat to- 
morrow,’ is a man of little faith.’’** 

Finally, Jesus recommends extreme reticence in pass- 
ing judgment on other men, “Judge not, that ye be not 
judged.” “And why beholdest thou the mote in thy 
brother’s eye, and considerest not the beam in thine own 
eye?” 

The doctors of the Synagogue, influenced by a like 





* Psalm XXxXiv;: 10; 22, + Proverbs x. 3. 
¢ Psalm cxxxvi. 25. § Ibid. cxlvii., cxlv. 16, 
| Ibid. exlvii. 9. 4] Exodus xiv. 13, 14. 


** TON wpD sos rs Sow no dos yb na °o ww on 55 
Talmud, Treatise Sota, 48, 6. 


162 THE DEICIDES. 


spirit of benevolence, and moderation, declared on their 
part, “Man should abstain from judging his friend and 
his enemy, for it is not easy to recognise the faults of a 
friend, or the merits of an enemy.’”* 

And just as Jesus said, ‘According as ye (digs others, 
so shall ye be judged,” so they declared, ‘‘That he who 
judges his neighbour charitably, shall be judged himself 
charitably in heaven.”t ~— 

Physicians first cure their own wound, poetically says 
the Middrasch-rabba, to signify that we must not blame 
in others those defects from which we ourselves are not 
exempt.{ 


IV. 


WE might multiply these quotations, but the above will 
suffice ; they prove that all the maxims which are justly 
admired in the sermon on the mount had been long cur- 
rent, expressed in almost the same words, in Israel and 
in the teachings of the Jewish Synagogue. There was 
therefore, neither novelty, nor any proof of divinity for 
the Hebrews contemporary with Jesus, in the principles 
which he preached to the people, and in which the im- 
portant doctrines of Moses and the prophets, and of the 
most illustrious and revered sages were simply repro-— 
duced. ) 

Besides, Jesus closes this important sermon with a 
solemn declaration which is, as it were, a summary of its 
contents, and which expressly connects his doctrine 
with the precepts of the law and of the former prophets. 
“Do unto others,” exclaimed he as a last exhortation, 





* Talmud, Treatise Ketouboth, 105, col. 2. 

+ Talmud, Treatise Schabbath, 27, col. 2; Treatise Aboth, 
vii. § 6. 

t+ Middrasch Rabba, Bereschit, xxiii. 


THE DEICIDES. 163 


“‘as ye would they should do unto you, for that zs the 
law and the prophets.” 

Thus we are perfectly justified in restoring to Gospel 
morality its true and legitimate name, “Jsraelztish mora- 
Zity.”” Above all are we in the right to repudiate energe- 
tically, on the authority of the decisive texts we have 
just read, the singular reproach cast on the ancient law, 
that of having taught and prescribed a negative mora- 
lity. How often, indeed, has it been falsely stated, that 
the Gospel and the Gospelalone introduced that principle 
into the world, which enjoins us to do unto others what 
we desire should be done unto us; while Judaism, it is 
affirmed, exhorted men zof¢ to do to others what they 
they would not should be done unto them! 

It is now clear whether this accusation against the Old 
Testament and against the Pharisean doctrine is well- 
founded. A judgment may now be formed, whether the 
law which enjoins us to “love our neighbour as ourself,” 
and to take no revenge, but to render good for evil, is in 
truth inferior to the most admired maxim of the Gospel 
and of Christianity. 

Assuredly then, Jesus was not an innovator in the 
domain of morals; he imitated the sages of Israel who 
preceded him, he reproduced their teaching, and almost 
verbally their expressions: he borrowed from them their 
most beautiful precepts, and if his doctrine did create a 
revolution in the Pagan world, to the Hebrews it was 
but the echo of Moses, of David, of Solomon and of the 
Fathers of the Synagogue. 

But in some respect the moral teaching of the son of 
Mary did deviate from that of the writings of the sacred 
authors, and on several very important points, the Jews 
themselves no longer recognised the grand principles 
which they had been previously accustomed to revere 
and to observe. 

Let us briefly examine this new phase of the investi- 
gation in which we are engaged. 


164 THE DEICIDES. 


iJ 


TWELFTH BOOK. 


‘BAD trees should be burnt—War—Compelle intrare—Reve- 
rence for parents—From those who have nothing, much shall 
be taken—The first shall be the last—The rich excluded 
from the kingdom of heaven—New Sermon on the Mount. 


I. 


Ir an inspired prophet arose at the present time in the 
world, if he undertook the holy office of reconducting 
mankind to the immortal principles of virtue, of justice, 
and of truth, might he not in his turn with reason dispute 
certain strange maxims proclaimed by the son of Mary? 

We have no hesitation in replying to this query in the 
affirmative. We see frequently indeed, thoughts embo- 
died in the words of Jesus which doubtless had in the 
mind of their author a lofty significance, but which his 
contemporaries could not comprehend, and which, even 
at this period excite in us much surprise in many re- 
spects. | 

What must the Jews have thought when they wer 
plainly told, “Therefore every tree which bringeth not 
forth good fruit must be hewn down and cast into the 
fi:e,”, and thus show themselves totally regardless of the 
amendment of the sinner ?* 

“ What!” must they have replied, ‘‘is there no pity or 
mercy to be bestowed on this poor tree, the sterility of 
whose neture prevents it yielding any fruit? Would not 
the gardener lavish all his skill, all his patience, all his 





* Matthew iii. 16, 


THE DEICIDES. 165 


love on its cultivation, and instead of tearing it up by 
the roots and condemning it for ever, would he not 
carefully watch it as long as a leaf remained on its 
branches ?” 

Again Jesus said, ‘“‘ Think not that I am come to send 
peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword. 
For I am come to set a man at variance against his fa- 
ther, and the daughter against her mother, and the 
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”* 

And those who heard these threatening words may 
well have rejoined, ‘What ! is this that religion of peace, 
fraternity, so long promised to suffering humanity? The 
prophets of Israel declared to us that on the advent of 
Messiah (Messenger), the wolf shall lie down with the 
lamb, that weapons of war shall be converted into in- 
struments of labor, that concord and union, the love of 
God and man shall reign over all the earth. And you 
predict discord and hatred! What then is the new law, 
which threatens us with such terrible misfortunes. What 
then is this Gospel of the kingdom, which far from preach- 
ing peace, promises us a relentless conflict, not only a 
conflict between peoples, but a struggle in the sanctuary 
of domestic hearth between parents and children? 

The Master of the Gospel, while further developing 
and explaining this painful theory of parables and 
maxims, adds, ‘“He that is not with me is against me.’’f 
Compel those who remain outside, to enter the house— 
compelle entrare.f 

And again might the sages of Israel have replied, who 
uttered this beautiful sentiment, “All the righteous, to 
whatever religion they belong, enjoy eternal life.’’§ 
What! are all those who are not adherents of the Gospel 
considered as enemies? But do you not see that you 





* Matthew x. 34, 35;.Luke xii. 49. 
¢ Luke xi, 23. ¢ Ibid. 
§ Talmud, Treatise Sanhedrin. 


166 THE DEICIDES. 


thus justify all fanaticism and all oppression ? Do you not 
see again that you hereby fan the flame of war and hatred 
between men, and that by a species of moral dogma, you 
justify the disastrous prediction you yourself uttered 
when you deciared that you came not to bring. peace 
but the sword! What! are all those not members of the 
church, to be deemed its implacabie adversaries? And 
wouid you, had you the power, condemn, curse and per- 
secute eternally the ignorant, the simple-minded, and 
the sincere worshippers of other Gods? But‘you say, 
No! we will save them in spite of themselves, we will 
force them to accept that truth of which-we alone are 
the apostles. “You will force them!” What! would you 
thus employ violence in the service of religion? Would 
you thus place a yoke of iron on soul and body in the 
name of the God of goodness and mercy.! Instead of 
aiding by gentleness, persuasion, and by the clear light 
of reason, would you employ constraint and rigour in 
order to fill yeur house? Is that true morality? Is that 
eternal justice? 

it is said in the Decalogue, ‘‘ Honour thy father and 
thy mother.”* In Deuteronomy it is said, “Cursed be 
he that setteth light by his father or his mother.’”’t In. 
the life of the son of Mary occur many circumstances in © 
which this filial duty seems to be entirely disregarded, 
and not without surprise, the Jews heard him express 
ideas apparently flagrantly contradicting these sacred 
principles. } ) 

Thus, at the moment when assembling his disciples 
around him, he began his predications, one of them, be- 
fore following thus entreated him, “Lord, suffer me first 
to go and bury my father.” But Jesus said unto him, 
. * Follow me, and let the dead bury the dead.’’f 
Another day when teaching in the Synagogue, his 





* Exodus xx, 12. _ + Deuteronomy xxvii. 16. 
{ Matthew viii. 21. 


‘THE DEICIDES. 167 


mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak 
with him, ‘‘ Then one said unto him, ‘Behold thy mother 
and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with 
thee.’ But he answered and said unto him that told 
him, ‘Who is my mother? and who are my brethren ?’’’* 

In another and yet more characteristic circumstance, 
he testified still greater severity towards her on whose 
bosom he had lain. It was at the marriage at Cana. 
“And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus said 
unto him, They have no wine. Jesus said unto her, 
Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not 
yet come.”’| What he has to do with her! But maternal 
love, filiahk piety, the voice of the heart and of nature; 
' what then had become of all these inexpressible senti-- 
ments that the sight only of a mother should awaken in 
the heart of a beloved child? What could the Hebrew 
people have thought, among whom reverence for parents 
and respect for family ties and affections were ever held 
so dear, on hearing these words? 

And another day he said yet more explicitly, “And 
if any man come to me, and hate not his father, and his 
mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, 

yea, and his own life also, he cannof be my disciple.f{ 
_ And whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after 
me, cannot be my disciple.” Doubtless these words may 
be in some respects explained and justified, signifying in 
an exaggerated form that devotion to God should hold 
predominance over all our terrestrial affections and in- 
terests. But this exaggeration of expression must have 
entirely perverted the meaning and the character of his 
doctrines in the eyes of his Jewish contemporaries, op~- 
posed as they were to all to which they had previously 





‘* Ibid. xii. 47, 48. + John ii. 4. . 
+ Si quis venit ad me et non odit patrem suum et matrem, et 
uxorem et filios, et fratres et sorores., .. non potest meus esse 
discipulus. Luke xiv. 26. | 


168 THE DEICIDES. 


adhered. In this infringement of the sacred principle of 
family life the traditions of Moses and the prophets of 
Israel could doubtless be no longer recognised. With 
this besides, were combined strange theories on social 
duties and right. ‘For unto every one that hath shall 
be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him 
that hath not shall be taken away that which he hath.’’* 
What was this inconceivable and distributive justice; 
and why threaten the indigent whether in worldly goods, 
or moral virtue, with being deprived of the little he pos- 
sessed? Again, Jesus says, ‘‘ Whoever exalteth himself 
_ shall be abased, and he who is greatest among you shall > 
be your slave; but many that are first shall be last, and 
the last shall be first.”t A singular application of the 
principle of equality not to limit it to the placing men 
on the same level, but to re-establish authority and des- 
potism by beginning at the opposite end of the social 
ladder and elevating the low above the high. Socialists 
and revolutionists have taken advantage of this theory 
in all ages, when they sought in their turn to oppress 
those who had for a shorter or longer period been their 
leaders or masters ! 

He also thus addressed a rich man whose piety and 
virtues were well known, but who declined to reduce 
himself to misery, by stripping himself of all his posses- 
sions to give them unto the poor: “Verily, I say unto 
you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a 
needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of 
God.’’t{ And every one in fact, might have replied as 
did -his disciples, What! is the rich man who makes a 
pious and noble use of the gifts God has bestowed on 
him, who religiously fulfils all the duties of charity, of 
morality and virtue, is he to forego the happiness of do- 
ing good and the hope of eternal Salvation, unless he 





* Matthew xxv. 29. : + Ibid. xxiii, 11, 12. 
Matthew xix. 23. 


THE DEICIDES. 169 


fulfil the one condition of impoverishing himself and of 
holding out his hand for alms in his turn? Here again, 
serious doubts must have entered the minds of those 
who listened to these predications of the new master. 


1, 


IN presence of these incomprehensible maxims, a pro- 
phet of our time, an apostle of the unity of the human 
race and of its universal brotherhood, adopting in his 
turn the form of the authoritative sermon on the mount, 
might address coming generations in these terms :— 

‘“You know that it is said in the Gospel, I came not 
to bring peace into the world, but discord. I came not 
to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a 
man at variance against his father, and the daughter 
against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her 
mother-in-law, and a man’s foes shall be they of his 
own household: but I say unto you, Let peace prevail 
in your dwellings, and never permit the faith in the Most 
High, to degenerate into a source of discord, hatred, and 
fratricidal strife. Ye have but one Father who is in 
heaven; and since, notwithstanding your errors, and 
notwithstanding the various forms under which you 
worship Him, He permitteth His bountiful sun to shine 
on you all without exception, and because He endoweth 
you all with intelligence and with physical and intel- 
lectual powers, imitate Him in His goodness and mercy; 
love those who acknowledge the truth; love those who 
walk in darkness; persecute no one; war with no one 
on account of his opinions, whether réligious, moral, 
or political, and leave God Himself to punish His of- 
fenders.” | 

You have seen that it is said in the Gospel, “If any 
one cometh unto me and hateth not his father or his 
mother, his brothers or his sisters, he is not worthy 
to be my disciple.” But I say unto you, “Serve God 


170 THE DEICIDES. 


with unswerving devotion, and above allelse; reverence 
the Heavenly Father of all mortals, but deem it not ne- 
cessary to hate your parents for His sake. Never per- 
mit your worship of things divine, however ardent it 
may be, to weaken that family love which is the true 
basis of social life, and without which there can be no 
virtue, either public or private. Honour your father 
and your mother, as syou would honour God whose re- 
presentatives and messengers they are at the side of the 
domestic hearth; never forget that the Decalogue has 
placed filial love at the head of all the moral duties it 
prescribes.” 

You know that the Gospel teaches, ‘That the first 
shall be the last, and the last shall be the first.’”” And I 
say unto you there are neither first nor last; you are all 
alike in the presence of the Eternal, you are all equal in 
life and in death; there are no distinctions between you 
except such as are created by your passions and your 
interests ; in the kingdom of heaven there is no differ- 
ence, the only difference is between :good and bad and 
all, whatever may have been their rank here below, are 
weighed in respect of virtue and of vice, with equal 
equity in the balance of Divine justice. 

Finally, you know it is said in the Gospel, “The rich 
shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven,” but I say 
unto you, Do not encourage feelings of envy and hosti- 
lity against those who are more fortunate than you; but 
accept the portion God has granted you in this world 
with humility and resignation, and be assured that the 
rich, if an honest, virtuous and benevolent man will. 
equally with the poor enter into that eternal life, and 
will there receive the reward he merits. 

And above all, love the One, Only and Eternal God 
with all thy heart and with all thy soul; love thy neigh- 
bour as thyself, whether he be Jew or Christian, China- 
man or Mussulman, whether he be for you or against 
you ; and look upon all menas your brothers, unto whom 


THE DEICIDES.... 171 


you are required to do the same as you would they should 
do unto you. : 

Would not this new sermon on the mount be as im- 
pressive and as just as that pronounced eighteen cen- 
turies ago by the son of Mary in the presence of the 
attentive Hebrews. 


~ 


*. ee ee Darr 
Tint Sia be 


23 ee ee 
~ Se Se 
a ee ae be 


a 
+ 





PART THE SECOND. 


Io 





PART THE SECOND. 





FIRST BOOK. 


Events subsequent to the death of Jesus—Tenacity of the in- . 
credulity of the Jews—Moral DetcipE—Double objections. 


SucH were the life, the death, and the doctrine of the 
great reformer whose part it was to introduce a new 
religion into the world. 

All the‘acts of his brief career, all that is most striking 
and characteristic in his predications have been here 
‘presented consecutively to our view. It appears to us 
that the justification of the Jewish people becomes 
therein as manifest as is the light of day. Neither the 
Messiah, nor a God revealed himself to the eyes of the 
oppressed people who were so impatiently awaiting a 
deliverer. The Hebrews were convinced when they 
condemned the son of Mary, that they were condemn- 
ing one of those pseudo-Messiahs of whom so great a 
number had arisen at that period; their indignation 
perhaps was augmented on finding their long-cherished 


‘hope was once more disappointed. Besides, sentence 


was pronounced on Jesus according to all the forms 
prescribed by the laws of Israel; and that sentence was 
- consistent with the ordinances of the sacred code, and 
a God alone could have arrested by a sudden revela- 
tion the decision of the magistrate and the hand of the 
executioner. But this decisive revelation was not made, 
and the Jews retained the conviction that they had in 
Jesus punished according to law, a man who sought to 
be regarded as a God, an agitator who might have com- 
promised the safety of the whole nation, a revolutionist 


176 THE DEICIDES. 


who aimed at subverting the political and religious con- 
stitution founded by Moses in obedience to the revela- 
tion of the Eternal amid the thunders of Sinai. 

Here we may offer an important remark, namely that 
subsequently to his punishment Jesus never revealed 
himself to the world. No public event followed his 
death, no revealing incident occurred to open the eyes 
of the Hebrews, or to alter the opinion which the vari- 
ous acts of his life caused them to entertain. In one 
word, the God-man, after having refused to grant them 
proofs of his divinity during his terrestrial existence, has 
ever since abandoned them to their involuntary error; 
he has evinced no further care of his people of Israel, 
for whose salvation and deliverance he nevertheless de- 
scended from heaven to earth... Since the painful scene 
of Golgotha, all manifestations have ceased from Jesus to 
the Jewish race and from Jesus to. the whole world. 
The Apostles, it is true, announced the second advent ; 
but though two thousand years have well nigh elapsed, 
the crucified God has not yet deigned to appear in the 
sight of men, in all the glory of his nee: to diffuse 
light in all souls. : 

Jerusalem was desrtroyed; the Jews, dispersed among 
all the nations of the earth have carried with them their 
eternal hopes in the advent of Messiah the deliverer 
and their inflexible incredulity respecting the son of 
Mary; persecuted, proscribed according to the predic- 
tion of their first legislator, yet awaiting with unshaken 
trust the hour of deliverance, of justice, and of restora- 
tion. The apostles of Jesus Christ in their turn quitted 
Judza, despairing of leading the flock of Israel into 
their fold. They carried the Gospel to the. Gentiles, 
applying themselves to the service and success of their 
apostolate with activity, energy, zeal, and devotion, which 
were greatly aided by the circumstances amid which they 
were called forth. After three centuries of struggle and 
skilful efforts, they succeeded iu effecting the acceptance 


THE DEICIDES. 17 


by the Pagan world of that Christian doctrine, of that 
faith in the God-Christ, which had wholly failed amid 
the chosen race to whom it had first been preached. 


« And (say the adversaries of Judaism) two facts subse- 
quent to the life of Jesus should have convinced the 
Jews of the divinity of Christianity and of its founder. 
The misfortunes which have everywhere befallen them, 
’ the hatred to which they have been exposed in all their 
wanderings, are these not decisive proofs? Even unto 
this day, they suffer the punishment of the iniquity of 
Christ’s judges; the history of the Jewish race, accord- 
ing to the significant words of Pashal, exhibits with un- 
flinching fidelity, that people’s condemnation and the 
proof of the truth of Christianity.” 


Yet more, should not also the miraculous triumph of 
the Christian faith have convinced the Hebrew people? 
A few apostles, devoid even of any elementary instruc- 
tion, simple fishermen, humble artisans won dominion 
over that Roman empire to whose laws the whole world 
had been subjected. They conquered despite their 
weakness, despite the coalition ofall the imperial powers 
against them, despite the most relentless persecution ; 
and they transformed that cross on which their master 
had expired, into the symbol of the faith and worship of 
all nations. Can it be conceived that this victory could 
have been won without the will and the help of God? 
And is not Jesus Christ revealed with sufficient splendour 
by the triumph of the universal church? In resisting 
this dazzling light by obstinately denying these miracles, 
the Jews committed a second crime as unpardonable as 
the condemnation of Jesus. They voluntarily rendered 
themselves guilty of a second Dezczde, by which they 
justly became the objects of the indignation of mankind. 


Are these reproaches better deserved than those which 
we have previously considered? It is our duty to exa- 
mine this question, and to leave no one element uncon- 


178 THE DEICIDES. 


sidered, of the great suit instituted against the Jewish 
people. 

Let us first ascertain if the spread of Christianity over 
the world can be accounted for by supernatural causes 
and by direct divine inspiration only, or whether it was 
not on the contrary, rather the simple result of circum- 
stances essentially human and political in their cha- 
racter, and calculated to corroborate, rather than to 
counteract, the opinion, or it may be said the prejudices 
entertained by the Israelites in respect of triumphant 
Christianity. Further, let us examine whether the hatred 
of which the Jews have been ‘the victims, whether the 
cruel persecutions to which they have been subjected 
for eighteen centuries are not due to causes which are 
wholly and evidently so natural, that it is needless to 
associate the name of the God of Justice, Mercy, and 
Love with deeds of wrath, vengeance and blood, and 
with crimes of rapine and homicide. 

A rapid exposition of the means which the most in- 
telligent of the Apostles employed in order to influence 
Pagan society, and of the political and moral condition 
which furthered their enterprise will furnish a sufficient 
reply to the first of these questions. 

A compendious investigation into the general situation 
of the Jews, in their relations to the Roman world andthe | 
Catholic world will answer the second. | 


THE DEICIDES. 179 


SECOND BOOK, 


Development of Christianity—Respect evinced by Jesus for the 
Jewish law—Prohibition against union with the Gentiles— 
Convictions and aims of the Apostles—Their words and acts 
after the death of Jesus—Their obedience to traditional ordi- 
nances—Saul, disciple of Gamaliel—His inspiration on the 
road to Damascus— He abandons the conversion of the 
Jews and undertakes that of the Gentiles—He abolishes the 
law—Progress of Paulism—Oppositions of the Apostles— 
Paul goes to Jerusalem.! 


I. 


NEITHER in the doctrine of its founder, nor in the 

principles of the primitive church was to be found 
that germ of universal dominion by which it was trans- 
formed into Catholicism.* To the important revolution, 

to the species of dogmatic coup d’etat accomplished by 
the Apostle Paul, are to be ascribed the efforts of the 
Christian sect for the conversion and the evangelisation 

of the Gentiles. A series of political events and exigen- 
cies soon caused the assumption by Catholicism of forms 
and symbols which differed greatly from the doctrine of 
the first apostles, and its adoption of laws, of a priest- 
hood, and of a centralization far more closely allied to 
Paganism than to the character of Christianity. 

In fact, it does not appear from the Gospel that Jesus 
was at all aware of the consequences that his doctrine 
was destined one day to produce on the future of 





* Catholicism is derived, as it is well known, from two Greek 
words, Kath olon, signifying “‘ over all, universal.” 


180 THE DEICIDES, 


humanity. In him we see only an energetic reformer of 
the Hebrew people, but we nowhere perceive that he 
betrayed any intention of passing beyond the borders of 
Palestine, or of bestowing on other nations the blessing 
of the new alliance which he preached to the Jewish 
population. 

If some parables, expressed in terms more or less ob- 
scure and mysterious, slightly indicate an appeal to the 
Gentiles to share in the Messianic banquet,* and to the 
culture ofthe vineyard ofthe Lord by the hands ofstrang- 
ers,t the posi!.:ve declarations of the Master of the Gospel 
leave no doubt as to his real intention. In the very 
early period of his predications he exclaims, “Think not 
that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: Iam 
not come to destroy but to fulfil. For verily, I say unto 
you, Till heaven andearth pass, one jot or one tittle shall 
in no wise pass from the Jaw till all be fulfilled.” Else- 
where he bids his disciples to “go not into the way of 
the Gentiles, but go rather tothe lost sheep ofthe House 
of Israel.’’§ Another day, on refusing to cure the daughter 
of a Canaanite, he declared, ‘‘Itis not meet to take the 
children’s bread and castittodogs.” | Besides, his whole 
life, from birth to death presents a continuous and strik- 
ing homage offered to the traditional law of Israel.. We 
see him religiously celebrating the various festivals of 
Judaism and fulfilling all its ceremonial practices, and the 
last meal—that solemn supper in which he points to him 
who is to he his betrayer—was virtually the scrupulous, 
although symbolized observance of one ofthe most anci- 
ent usages of the Synagogue. The Apostle Paul eulo- 





* Matthew, compare viii. ro and the following ; xxi. 335 etc.; 
xxii, 1 and the following ; xxiv. 14. 

+ Matthew vi. 1—8 ; xxii. 35—40. 

¢ Ibid. v. 17 and the following ; Luke xvi. 17. 

§ Ibid. x. 5 and following. 

| Ibid. xv. 21 and following ; Mark vii. 24 and following. 


THE DEICIDES. 18r 


gises him for having been ever faithful to the law of his 
fathers, and for having on all occasions obeyed the com 
mandments of the sacred writers.* | 

These general observations which might be indefinitely 
multiplied prove that Jesus doubtlessly purposed to in- 
troduce a reform into the midst of Judaism by appearing 
as Messiah, the deliverer announced by the prophets, but 
to that aim alone did he limit his aspirations. 

According to Jesus, Judaism was to obtain to the end 
of time in all the purity of its fundamental principle; in 
pursuance of his own declaration, he came not to destroy, 
he came to fulfil the law. 


I]. 


This conviction dwelt yet more firmly in the minds of 
the apostles. From the very commencement, the deli- 
verance of Israel was their one thought, their only aim, 
their sole pre-occupation. We see that afterthe condem- 
nation and death of Jesus they became anxious and dis- 
heartened when struck with a painful doubt; they ex- 
claimed, ‘ We trusted that it would have been he who 
should have redeemed Israel, and to-day is the third day | 
since he died,” { and when Jesus arisen from the dead, 
showed himself in the midst of his disciples, Lord wilt 
thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel.’ 

Thus, the literal fulfilment of the prophecies, the real 
restoration of the throne of David, the removal of a 
foreign yoke from the Holy Land was virtually what was 
expected by the apostles. Israel and the law of God 
were ever the pivot of their faith, the basis of their 
hopes. 





* Paul, Epistle to the Galatians iv. 4. Also on these séseinl 
points, Matthew xxvi. 17; vi. 4; Luke iv. 16. 

+ Luke xxiv. 21, 

¢t Acts of the Aposiles i. 6. 


182 THE DEICIDES., 


Their conduct after the death of their master permits 
no doubt on this head. From that day forth, they formed 
a new sect in Judaism, but they did not sever themselves 
_ from the traditions of the Synagogue, they did not re- 
ject the unlimited authority of the sacred writings, any 
more than did the other Jewish sects—the Essenes, the 
Sadducees, the Samaritans, &c. They maintained only 
that the promised liberator came in the person of Jesus, 
and that this new standard must be their rallying point. 
It is a remarkable fact that they did noi at that time de- 
clare that Jesus was God. The indignation which arose 
on all sides in Israel, even among his disciples, when Jesus 
claimed a divine character seems to have cooled the.zeal 
and shaken the conviction of the apostles as to this 
point. They described Jesus simply as acelebrated man, a_ 
descendant of King David, destined to fulfil all the pro- 
phetic promises. This is clearly shown in the Acts of 
the Apostles. ‘“O Israelites,” exclaims Peter to the as- 
sembled multitude, “hearthese words; Jesus of Nazareth, 
a man approved of God among you by miracles, by won- 
ders and signs which God did by him in the midst of you 
as ye yourselves also know.’ * 

“Therefore David. being a prophet, and knowing that 
'God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of 
his loins according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ 
to sit on his throne.” t 

Hence the only point ofdiscussion between the Jews and 
the apostles was whether the Messiah, the son of David 
had come or not; but it in no way related to the prin- 
ciples of the law.{t The apostles, following the example 
of Jesus, remained faithful.to Jewish observances. The 
Acts represent them to us as meeting every day in the 
Temple, praising God and having favour with all people.§ 





* Acts of the Apostles ii, 22. + Ibid. ii. 30. 
} Luke xxiv. 53. § Acts of the Apostles iii. 1. 


THE DEICIDES ~“* 183, 


+ 


We see Peter and John go out together to the Temple at 
the usual hour of prayer. The portrait of James, the 
brother of Jesus, has been preserved for us in Christian 
tradition by the hand of Eusebius.* After the death of 
the master, he became the chief at the new church in 
Jerusalem. | 

James is there called a true Jew, devoted from his birth 
to be a Nazarene, his whole life consecrated to the religi- 
ous observances, passing his day in the Temple, entering 
the sanctuary with the High Priest, and religiously obey- 
ing all the ordinances of the law. Only, the apostles and 
their chief availed themselves of their habitual visits to 
the Temple to preach Christ, the saviour whom God had 
sent in order to give remission of their sins to the Heb- 
rews.t The people listened to these discourses; priests 
and magistrates permitted them to be delivered without 
interruption; the Jews everywhere saluted James with 
the Epithet of ‘the just,” and the bulwark of Israel.f 
In fact, the apostles appearing to have abandoned the 
idea of the divinity of Christ and to limit themselves to 
that of a Messianic mission, were considered to be a sect 
that offered no serious danger to the Jewish faith; no 
more idea prevailed of proscribing them than the Sad- 
ducees and the Essenes. 

Here again we should appreciate the liberty permitted 
by Phariseeism to thought and speech in Israel. Pro- 
vided there was no infringement of the fundamental law 
revealed on Sinai, provided that the individual lived in 
accordance with the general principles of Judaism, he had 
the right of preaching to the people according to the inspi- 
ration of his conscience and of his will. Thus, the apostles 
could freely maintain that the Messiah had arrived; no- 
where does it appear in the “Acts” that this opinion, 
though generally rejected by the people, produced at the 
outset any schism in the church and early Christianity. 





* Eccclesiastical History, ii. 23. 
+ Acts of the Apostles ii. © + Eusebius, loc. cit 


rig ge THE DEICIDES. 


But at the same time, we must particularly call atten- 
tion to the fact, that the disciples of Jesus showed them- 
selves to be scrupulous observers ofthe Jewish law ; they 
were indignant at the thought of violating any of the rites 
and commandments of the Synagogue. On asolemnoc-_ 
casion, when a centurion named Cornelius, touched by 
the divine power, begged Peter to come in order that he 
might admit him, the apostle himself hesitated to have 
any intercourse with one uncircumcised, or to partake of 
any impure food at his house, According to the apost- 
olic narrative, it was necessary that God should visit 
Peter with a positive vision, ere he would consent tode- 
file himself by the use of forbidden viands. But on his 
return to Jerusalem, they that were of the circumcision 
contended with him, saying, “‘ Why wentest thou in to 
men uncircumcised, and why dids’t thou eat with them?’’* 
Peter defended himself, described his vision, and all the 
brethren held their peace, and were surprised “that God 
had granted also unto the Gentiles the gift of repentance 
which giveth life.’”’ From all these facts it may be clear- 
ly inferred that the apostles accepted the exhortation 
of their master according to the letter, when he enjoined 
them “ Not to follow after the heathens, but to seek out 
the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” These men were 
true Israelites in the strictest sense of the. word, not any 
of them had the slightest intention of abandoning Juda- 
ism; on the contrary, all their efforts tended to the one 
object, that of ensuring to it the victory which had so 
long been promised to it by Moses and the prophets. 

The exclusively Jewish character with which the 
Christian sect was invested continued until the appear- 
ance of the Apostle Paul. Saul, a disciple of Gamaliel, 
one of the most celebrated Jewish doctors, appeared at 
first among the most violent opponents of the new. doc- 
trine; he persecuted its disciples with the -very: vehe- 





* Acts of the Apostles x. and xi. 


THE DEICIDES. 185 


mence which he displayed, and continued to display in 
all things, alike in his sympathy and his hatred, until the 
closing years of his existence. One pay while pursuing 
his road to Damascus, a sudden illumination from on 
high took possession of his soul, he thought he heard a 
divine voice commanding:him to serve henceforth that 
mysterious Christ, whose disciples he had hitherto per- . 
secuted. Converted by this vision, he became one of 
the most fervent apostles of the new church, changed 
his name from Saul to Paul, clothed the Christian doc- 
trine in a new formula, and by assigning to it a new aim, 
transtormed it entirely. The character of the Apostle 
Paul and the revolution which he effected in the aposto- 
late deserve to be minutely examined. 


III. 


PAUL being profoundly imbued with the practical spirit 
of Judaism, and having derived from the lessons of the 
great Pharisean doctors the pre-eminently social ten- 
dency which characterises the teachings of the fathers of 
the Synagogue, comprehended easily that the new religi- 
ous sect would infallibly wholly die out, if it remained 
within the narrow limits which Jesus had assigned to it 
and beyond which the apostles refused to go. 

In fact, to hope to convince and to convert the Jews, 
by preaching to them either the advent of the Messiah, 
or the apparition of a new God in the son, and an emana- 
tion of the Eternal in the person of Jesus, was wholly 
utopian.. According to the nature of facts, as according 
to that of the principles, this double belief would necessa- 
rily meet with invincible obstacles in the Hebrew people. 

The appearance of the pretended Messiah gn the earth 
had virtually effected no change in the material condition 
of the Israelites. After, as before, they remained subject 
to a foreign power, the throne of David was not re-estab- 


186 THE DEICIDES. 


lished, and the national independence was not re- 
conquered. Thus, it was clearly impossible that Israel 
could recognise fn the prophet of Nazareth him who ac- 
cording to the prophecy was destined to be its liberator. 
The doctrine of Jesus had created a new sect in the midst 
of the Jewish people, a further source of division; but the 
Romans continued to be all powerful in Judea, and the 
Hebrew patriots trembled with impatience under the 
yoke. Amidst such circumstances it was difficult to con- 
vince the Jews that the Messianic era had arrived. 

In matters of principle, the Jews appeared yet more 
refractory ; they had inflexibly condemned Jesus because 
he had proclaimed himself God, and because he either 
could not, or would not give them decisive proofs of his 
divinity. After his death, no visible, positive and public 
fact had occurred calculated to establish his divine cha- 
racter and to reveal the signs so vainly solicited from the 
master of the Gospel during his life. The Jews there- 
fore, had no motive for abandoning that dogma, the ab- 
solute Unity of God, which formed the essential basis 
and vital force of Mosaism; and the apostles were as hope- 
less of converting them tothe doctrine of any hypostasis, 
as subsequent persecutions were powerless to make them 
acknowledge the trinity. | | 

For the Christian sect there was no chance ofa future, 
if they confined themselves to Judea. Besides, would 
the apostles have been more capable than their master 
of winning those whom the predications of Jesus had 
failed to convince? In respect of morals; they presented 
nothing new to the Jews, and in point of dogma they 
more and more impaired the great principle of the Unity 
on which the secular law of Israel rested. Paul under- 
stood well, that only beyond Palestine were the deve- 
lopment and success of the Christian idea possible. As 
the Jews would not accept the Gospel, it must be carried 
to the Gentiles. The enterprise was a bold one, and 
worthy of attracting an exceptional mind. Paul devoted 


THE DEICIDES. 187 


himself to it with a self-sacrifice and an energy which 
cannot be too greatly admired. He openly declared 
himself the apostle of the Gentiles, and quitting the holy 
land and forsaking the apostles who timidly shut them- 
selves up in Jerusalem, he rushed daringly intothe midst 
of the Pagan world, there to preach Christ, the god-man 
dying on the cross for the salvation of the human race. 
Paul departed without consulting the apostles, without 
coming to any understanding with them either as to the 
means, or the aims of his apostolate. The miraculous 
revelation which he pretended to receive on the road to 
Damascus, and which moreover, took place without any 
witnesses, had put him, he affirmed, in direct communi- 
cation with Jesus Christ. He had no order or mission 
to receive from any mortal, since the divine and crucified 
Lord had vouchsafed unto him instruction, to guide him 
on his future course. He set forth, traversing Arabia 
during three years; then, after a short halt at Damascus, 
he went to Syriaand Asia Minor, andemployed ten years 
in visiting the various provinces of these countries.* 


IV. 


WITH the same instinct with which he discerned that 
Christianity was lost, if shut up in Judea and content to 
become, like Esseneism and Sadduceeism, simply a Jew- 
ish sect, he soon perceived that the Gospel would not be 
accepted by the Gentiles if it was offered to them under 
the severe form of the law and rites of Israel. Paul,con- 
sequently, on his own authority and justifying the means 
by the end, at once severed himself from all allegiance 
with the doctrine of the Bible and that of the Gospel. 
Instead of saying with Jesus that every iota of the law 
should be fulfilled, he openly declared that it should be 





* Epistle to the Galatians i. 5. 


188 THE DEICIDES. 


for ever abolished, with all its ceremonials and all its 
ordinances.* Instead of imitating the Apostles, who 
were displeased with Peter on account of an accidental 
violation of the commandments of the Pentateuch, he 
preached the uselessness and unavailableness of these 
commandments, Instead of believing, as did the first 
disciples of Jesus, that from the Jews salvation was to 
proceed, andthat in Judaism, sublimated in the Messi- 
anic era, all the nations of the earth would be united, he 
taught that it was of little moment, in regard to salvation, 
whether the individual was Jew, Greek, or Roman, cir- 
cumcised or uncircumcised, but that all men were equal 
and free, and all were one in Jesus Christ.t 


This was the first important compromise attempted 
between Christianity and the Pagan world. Amidst the 
manifest impossibility of indnciag the heathens to adopt 
the customs of Judaism, especially those which relate to 
ceremonial observances and circumcision, Paul wholly 
and simply renounced the Jewish law, and confined 
himself to the requiring from the Gentiles faith in Jesus 
Christ. 


The celebrated Epistle to the Galatians contains a 
complete statement of the new doctrine; Paul therein 
frankly enjoins non-circumcision and faith without 
works. By the appropriation and application of the 
great principles of Habakkuk, ‘‘The just shall live by 
faith,’ he with one stroke destroyed the entire law and 
its ceremonial ordinances. 





* Epistle to the Galatians v.5, and all the first epistle to the 
Corinthians, © 

+ Epistle to the Corinthians i. 9; Epistletothe Romans x. 12. 
Epistle to the Galatiansi iii, 28. and v.1, 13; Epistle to the Corin- 
thians iii. 17. 

¢ Epistle to the Romans iii. 30, iv. dassim ; Epistle to the Ga- 
latians iii, I1.—13. 


THE DEICIDES. 189 
V. 


UNDER these conditions, his work made rapid progress. 
_ The people whose conversion Paul had undertaken, being 
no longer required to accept either the covenant of the . 
flesh, or a worship with which were associated manifold 
and complicated prohibitions, lent a willing ear to the 
prelections of the fiery apostle. Besides, the general cir- 
cumstances amid which these predications were uttered 
singularly promoted their influence and success. The 
equality of all men before God was virtually what the 
Apostle of the Gentiles preached; in fact, universal 
liberty and redemption. He taught that the Eternal had 
sent His son upon the earth to be incarnated in ahuman 
body and to die an ignominious death, in order to save 
all humanity by this divine sacrifice; he said that hence- 
forth there were to be neither great nor small, neither 
masters nor slaves, but that there was but one Lord, the 
Christ, a mysterious and universal body of whom. all | 
men are the limbs. He added that the most splendid 
ceremonial worship, sacrifices and offerings were wholly 
valueless, but faith sufficed to ensure eternal happiness, 
and the humblest who believed is preferred by Christ to 
the wealthiest who offered hecatombs on the altars of 
their gods, 

All these principles, all these promises were wonder- 
fully suited to the populations of that time. None are 
ignorant of the fact that slavery and degeneracy were 
the incurable social plagues of antiquity. During along 
previous period, low mutterings, sometimes rising to 
formidable insurrections had given the Roman aris- 
tocracy warning that by indulgence in such vices, they 
would assuredly sooner or later work their own ruin. 
The inauguration of the Imperial form of government, 
the extreme centralisation by which the weight of the iron 
hand of the Rome of the Czsars, and the exactions and 
the cruelties of the pro-consuls were felt in the remotest 


190 THE DEICIDES. 


corners of the known world, had excited an impatience 
which the spirit of nationality often ripened into bloody 
revolt. The Romans could only hold dominion over the 
whole world by rivetting ever closer the fetters of their 
slaves. Hewho came to preach liberty and equality to 
all these enslaved peoples, who in the name of a new 
God, announced to them an universal deliverance, had 
he not found unfailing means of securing attention and 
of gathering in a short time, numerous proselytes from 
among them around him? Wherever Paul appeared, 
his glowing utterances produced a profound impression; 
he organised everywhere real associations under the 
name of churches, which, communicating with each 
other, soon covered Syria and Asia Minor, and subse- 
quently Macedonia and Epirus, with a net-work ofsecret 
societies, whose political influence and character we will 
investigate later. 


Vi;* 


BuT in the midst of this colossal enterprise, Paul sud- 
denly found himself checked by the other apostles, who 
were alarmed of the deep abyss he had dug between 
Judaism and rising Christianity. 

It will be remembered that the first disciples of Jesus 
had remained scrupulously faithful to the original doc- 
trine of their master and to the law of Israel. We have 
seen that they would not permit one of their number 
to eat at the table of the heathen, or to pollute himself 
by the use of forbidden meats; we have also seen that 
1eligiously observing all the ceremonial of worship, they 
were resolved to devote themselves to the instruction 
of Israel, and not to suffer, as the Gospel expresses it, 
“that the bread of the children should be thrown to 
strange dogs.”’ 


THE DEICIDES. 7 ior 


When they became aware of the singular and funda- 
mental concession, of the unexpected compromise by 
means of which Paul effected the conversion of the 
Gentiles, their emotion was extreme. They were terrified 
at this great deviation from the primitive doctrine, and 
they sent emissaries from Jerusalem to Antioch, then 
the central point at which Paul exercised his apostolate, 
who were charged to re-establish the Gospel teaching 
which had been thus manifestly impaired by the ardent 
apostle of the Gentiles. These emissaries addressed 
themselves directly to the people, and declared to the 
faithful “that they could not be saved, if they were not 
circumcised. according to the law of Moses, and if at 
did not wholly observe the law.’’* 

When the new converts heard these words, they were 
sorely distressed. What was this law of which they had 
never heard; was it indeed necessary to become Jews in 
the flesh in order to aspire to that salvation so solemnly 
promised? And many of them refused to incur so heavy 
an obligation. 

Paul, with his clear good sense, well understood the 
terrible blow hurled against his infant work ; he felt that 
all would be lost, if he did not go himself to Jerusalem 
to plead his cause, if he did not obtain the acquiescence 
of the apostles in the system which he deemed it right 
to pursue, and in which he had so happily succeeded. 

On the result of this step depended the future of 
Christianity. Paul felt that should the immediate dis- 
ciples of Jesus pronounce his condemnation, he would 
fail in his enterprise, and the triumph of which he thence- 
forth felt secure would be transformed into complete 
defeat; if approved by them, he would derive fresh 
strength from their concurrence. 

He hesitated no longer, but betook himself to Jeru- 
salem and to the presence of the twelve Apostles, in 





* Epistle to the Galatians, passim, 


192 THE DEICIDES, 


order to lay before them the specific character and con- 
ditions of the Gospel, as preached by him to the Gentiles. 

This conference, at which the principles by which the 
new church was to be regulated were first discussed, 
deserves special consideration. It was the earliest com- 
promise between Apostolic Christianity and Paganism ; 
and it not only involved the rejection by the Apostles 
of the formal traditions of the synagogue, but it also 
constituted an important deviation from the doctrines 
of Jesus, — : 


THE DEICIDES. 193 


“THIRD BOOK. 


CONFERENCE and compromise at Jerusalem—Paul adheres at 
first to the resolutions therein adopted—He soon deviates 
from them—Conflict at Antioch—The resistance of Paul— 
Epistle to the Galatians—Immutability of the law—Epistle 
of James in support of the law—Insubordination of Paul— 
Conflict at Corinth—Paul returns to Jerusalem—He there 


makes public apology—He is put in prison and sent to 
Rome—Summary. 


THE discussion which took place at Jerusalem between 
Paul and the other apostles, if we judge by the docu- 
ments and reports of witnesses that remain, must have 
been extremely violent, as the real question to be ascer- 
tained was whether the Gentiles should or should not 
be subjected to circumcision and to the observances of 
the Jewish law. Paul was accompanied by his favourite 
disciple Titus, a Greek by birth, and a recent convert 
who had been exempted, like the other Gentiles evan- 
gelised by Paul, from the covenant in the flesh. The 
high position of Titus, the zeal which he evinced for the 
‘new faith, the important apostolic missions entrusted 
to him by Paul, all combined to offer a striking example 
of what might be hoped from the Gentiles, if they were 
exonerated from circumcision and works, and if faith 
alone was required of them. Paul hoped to convince 
the chief Christians of Jerusalem by this all-powerful 
fact; he therefore presented himself, escorted by Titus, 
to this solemn assembly which the Christian tradition 
incorrectly terms the first ‘“‘ Council of Jerusalem.” 

The discussion was stormy. The ultra-liberality of 


194 ° THE DEICIDES. 


Paul’s doctrine alarmed the first disciples of Jesus; they 
no Jonger recognised therein the teachings of their mas- 
ter, and they clearly perceived that the adoption of this 
course would annihilate every hope of convincing the 
Jews. What then would be the basis of the new Church, 
from the day on which this rupture between Judaism 
-and the new sect should be definitely accomplished ; 
from the day when, after the entire modification of the 
dogma and spirit of the Sacred Writings, their ordinan- 
ces and texts should likewise be rejected? What would 
be the rules and the principles of that new Church? 

. Paul energetically repudiated any return to Jewish 
tradition. He had received, he declared, a direct reve- 
lation from Jesus Christ. According to his strange ex- 
pression, “He ‘is dead to the law, for he through the 
law is dead to the law, and if he built again the things 
that he destroyed, he would make himself a transgres- 
sor,’* he declared that he would not yield, that he re- 
fused to subject himself to what was required of him, 
that he had a right to preach the Gospel to the uncir- 
cumcised, and that he would continue his apostolate.t 
He especially pointed out that were he compelled to mo- 
dify his doctrine, he would thereby endanger the result 
of all he had previously done and compromise all he 
might in future effect. 

The effects produced by Paul were really considerable. 
A great many Gentiles had adopted Paulism, and his 
broad theories had widened the narrow horizon of the 
apostles of Jerusalem. The rising Church saw flocking 
from all parts children to whom Judaism had not given 
birth. To arrest this movement of proselytism would 
have been singularly imprudent. .A decisive step was 
taken: the pagan consented to recognise and accept Je- 
sus Christ and through him the God of the faith of Israel. 





* Epistle to the Galatians, ii. 18, Io. 
+ Ibid. ii. 4, 5. | | f Ibid ii. 2. 


THE DEICIDES. 195 


Would it have been a wise policy suddenly to close 
against them the door which a tolerant hand had half- 
opened before them? Would it have been right to dis- 
organise and dissolve the churches which had arisen at 
the voice of the indefatigable apostle, in Syria, Asia Mi- 
nor and Greece? | 

These considerations. produced a compromise by which 
to each party was secured the right of adopting, without 
either ceding any of their respective principles, different 
methods for the greatest success of the new enterprise. 
Paul retained the mission of preaching the Gospel to 
the uncircumcised and Peter to the circumcised,* com- 
bining with it the faithful observance of the whole Mo- 
saic law. The apostles did not compel Titus the beloved 
disciple of Paul to submit to circumcision, and the two 
parties, the one consisting of James, Peter and John, 
the other of Paul and Barnabas, offered each other the. 
hand of fellowship as a sign of association.t In permit- 
ting Paul again to depart in order to carry on his apos- 
tolate, they only recommended him, according to the 
Epistle to the Galatians,t not to forget the poor of Jeru- 
salem; but according to the Acts of the Apostles,§ while 
consenting not to enforce circumcision on the Gentiles, 
the twelve exacted from Paul that he should require the 
faithful of his Churches to abstain from blood, from torn 
flesh, from all meats that had been sacrificed to ani 
and from all impure connections.1 


II. 


Ir the texts of the Aczs are to be believed, Paul must 
_ have faithfully fulfilled his new mission within the pre- 
scribed limits ; he even did not hesitate in certain cases 





* Epistle to the Galatians, ii. 7, 8. + Ibid. 9. 
¢ Ibid. ro, § Acts, xv. 20 and following. 
{ Acts, xv. 28, 29. 


196 THE DEICIDES. 


to subject several of his disciples to circumcision. The 
chapter which follows the one we have just quoted, ex- 
hibits him arriving at Lystrium and gaining a new dis- 
ciple, Timothy, whom he circumcised when he went 
forth with him.* The text adds that afterwards these 
two went together from town to town, prescribing as a 
rule to the faithful to keep that which had been ordained 
by the apostles and the priests of Jerusalem.t But the 
fizry spirit of the evangelising apostle of the Gentiles 
could not long submit to the legal discipline to which 
his colleagues had sought to restrict him. Peter, who 
during the life and after the death of his master Jesus, 
had always shown great inconsistency and indecision, 
aroused a new conflict as serious as the first, of which 
- Antioch became the theatre. 

Peter had come to Antioch, where allowing himself to 
be led away by the example of Gentizes whom Paul had 
converted, he eat with the pagans and openly violated 
the ordinances of the Jewish law. James, who in virtue 
of his position as brother of Jesus, had been dignified 
with the title of chief of the Church at Jerusalem, hav- 
ing learnt these circumstances, sent special messengerst 
to Antioch, charged to address serious reproaches to 
Peter and to the other believers. Their remonstrances 
must have had great effect, for their consequence was 
not only a final separation between Peter and the Gen- 
tiles, but also the alienation from them of Barnabas the 
companion of Paul’s apostolate. The other Jews in An- 
tioch, says the Epistle of the Galatians, followed the 
example of the apostles and abandoned the Gentiles. 
Paul on hearing these facts, which again imperilled the 





* Tbid. xvi. 3. + Ibid. 4. 
t¢ The text of the Epistle to the Galatians permits the exis- 
tence of no doubt on this head. Peter, it is said, eat with the 
Gentiles before the arrival of some persons sent by James, 
“ Quidam a Jacobo,” Epistle to the Galatians, ii. 12. 


THE DEICIDES. 7 


past success and all the future of his predications, yielded 
to a violent fit of passion. To this feeling of irritation 
the Epistle to. the Galatians is due; it is the most inte- 
resting record of the epoch, that which reveals to us 
with the greatest precision the means used to attract 
foreign nations, the struggles in which the apostles of 
the Gentiles had to engage and the compromises to 
which the Christian doctrine was successively subjected. 

Paul’s indignation against Peter and the other apostles 
was extreme and broke forth into abuse: ‘I withstood 
him to.the face (said he in his epistle), because he was 
to be blamed. For before that certain came from James, 
he did eat with the Gentiles, and using hypocrisy, he 
desired to compel the Gentiles to live as do the Jews, 
though living himself like the Gentiles and not like the 
Jews.”* The words are significant ; they prove that the 
compromise of Jerusalem had worked no real solution, 
and that virtually the question to be ascertained was 
whether the Gentiles could or could not be admitted 
into the Church, without being subjected to all the ordi- 
nances of the Jewish law. Thus Paul had obtained 
nothing whatever; the fundamental principle of his 
work was ever attacked anew; the immediate disciples 
of Jesus remained inflexible in the matter of ceremonial, 
and all that Paul, the converter of the Gentiles had said 
-and done among. strange peoples was thenceforth con- 
sidered as. null and void. ai 

The grief of the apostle in presence of this new dan- 
ger was profound, but his energy was equal to the dan- 
ger itself. He cries in accents of despair to the Galati- 
ans: “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, 
that you should rebel against the truth ?’t Have I in- 
deed bestowed upon you labour in vain? AmI therefore 
become your enemy?f{ Ye did run well, who then hind- 





* Epistle to the Galatians, ii. r1r—14. 
+ Epistle to the Galatians, iii, 1. ¢ Ibid. iv. rz and 16, 
II 


198 THE DEICIDES. 


ered you?’* He passionately denounced those who 
endeavoured to separate his disciples from him in order 
to convert them to their own erroneous teachings ; then 
setting forth the whole of his doctrine in yet stronger 
terms, he again insisted with extreme violence on the 
vanity of the works of the law :—“‘The law is of no avail,”’ 
cries he, “faith alone availeth, for as many as are of the 
works of the law are under the curse.t| Wherefore the 
law was our schoolmaster to bring us like children unto 
Christ, in order that we might be justified by faith, but 
after that faith has come, we are no longer under a 
schoolmaster. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is 
neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; 
for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, 
then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the 
promise.” Thus the question was once more clearly put; 
notwithstanding the repeated warnings of the apostles 
of Jerusalem, Paul did proclaim the abolition of the Jew- 
ish law and cf all the works of the law. James, to whom 
his relationship to Jesus and his recognised authority 
secured such powerful influence on the Christian society 
of the period, deemed it right to re-establish the truth 
of the teachings of Jesus, in opposition -to the errors of | 
the apostle ; with this object he wrote his famous epistle, 
which furnishes a peremptory reply to the principles of 
Paulism. 

“ Faith that has not works,” exclaims he, “is dead be- 
ing alone. Man is justified by his works and not by 
faith alone. For as the body without the spirit is dead, 
so faith without works is dead also. For whosoever 
shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, 
he is guilty of all.’’t 

Thus, the effect of the conflict at Antioch was to render 
more manifest the radical disagreements which existed 





_ © Ibid. v. 7. + Ibid. iii, ro, 
. ¢ Epistle to St. James, ii. 


THE DEICIDES. 199 


between Paul and the other apostles. It ended in the 
solemn condemnation of Paulism by the head of the ris- 
ing Church, and in the declaration that absolute obedi- 
ence to all the observances of the Jewish law was the 
sole means to ensure salvation.* 


Tif. 


But Paul was not the man to submit thus easily. We 
have seen that he boasted of having openly resisted Pe- 
ter the first of the twelve. In his Epistle to the Galati- 
ans, he had even dared to pass a public censure on him 
who was chosen by Jesus to be the corner stone of the 
future church. He continued preaching against the law: — 
and the apostles of Jerusalem again alarmed, organised 
a counteracting mission in opposition to the bold inno- 
vator, of which a proof exists in the Epistle to the Co- 
rinthians. 

The struggle caused by the doctrine of the Gentile 
Apostle broke out this time at Corinth, one of the most 
important communities founded by Paul. From the in- 
dications in the second of these memorable Epistles, it 
appears certain that envoys, dispatched from Jerusalem 
and bearing important letters of recommendation,t hav- 
ing arrived at Corinth, severely condemned the princi- 
ples professed by Paul, and organised a formidable party 
to which Paul himself applies the name of the “party of 
Peter. 


This party was, as at Antioch, essentially Judaising ; 





* The much abused Pharisees were far more tolerant in re- 
spect of the observance of the law. He who fulfils with since- 
rity, say they, a single precept is worthy to be inspired witha 
spirit of prophecy. Yalkut, p. 69 ; 2 Talmud Treatise Chaghi- 
gah, p. 9. 

+ 2 Epistle to the Corinthians, iii. 1 and following. 

¢ 1 Corinthians, i. 12. 


200 THE DEICIDES. 


they declared that salvation could not be won, save by 
entire submission to all the ordinances of Mosaism ; 
further, the envoys of the Church of Jerusalem, in order 
more effectually to oppose the illegal tendencies of Paul- 
ism, transferred the discussion to more delicate ground: 
they denied that Paul had been invested by any one 
with the. right of preaching the Gospel, and they thus 
endeavoured to shake the very foundations of his spiri- 
tual power. We may infer the gravity of the strife from 
the ardour with which Paul. defended himself on this 
head; he stated that he had received his mission from 
Jesus Christ only, that he had seen in person the Man- 
God; that he was free, that he was an Apostle equally 
with the others; that to no one had he to render ac- 
count, either of his actions or of his words.* In another 
place he haughtily declares, ‘that he deems himself in 
nothing inferior to the very great apostles, and that he 
has worked more than all of them collectively.’’t ‘‘See- 
ing that many glory after the flesh, I will glory also. 
Are they Hebrews? soam I. Are they Israelites ? so am 
I. Are they the seed of Abraham? soamI. Are they 
ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more.’’f 

Thus war was declared anew between the evangelising 
apostle of the Gentiles and the other disciples of Jesus. 
But this time it was not to be terminated by a mere com- 
promise. The adherents of the ancient law completely 

carried the day. 
' In truth, we see Paul in the Acts of the Apostles § 
after this new and singular occurrence, return once more 
to Jerusalem in order doubtless, to give an explanation 





* Jbid. ix. 1; xv. 8; 2 Corinthians, v. 13; xii. 1 and follow- 
ing. dines | : 

+ 2 Corinthians, xi. 5; xii. 11; 1 Corinthians, xv. 10. 
_ £ 2 Corinthians, xi. 18 and following. 

§ Acts, xxi. 20 and following. 


THE DEICIDES. = 201 


of his conduct and to answer the accusations preferred 
against him. The first thing that James and the priests 
of the community required of him was that he should 
make a public apology and a solemn recantation of his 
former doctrine. ‘‘Thou seest, brother, how many thou- 
sands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all 
zerlous of the law, and they are informed of thee that 
thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles | 
to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circum- 
cise their children, neither to walk after the customs. 
Do therefore this; take them, and purify thyself with 
them, and be at charges with them: and all may know 
that those things whereof they were informed concern- 
ing thee are nothing; and that thou thyself keepest the 
law.''* | | 

Paul yielded to this condition, although it involved an 
entire repudiation of the principles of his apostolate. 
He who had so bitterly reproached Peter. with being 
guilty of hypocrisy at Antioch when he pretended to 
Judaise, had recourse like him to dissimulation. He 
publicly performed ceremonies which were intended to 
convince those who were present that he was a faithful 
observer of the Mosaic ordinances. But the people 
were not deceived by this comedy, they recognised in 
him, notwithstanding this pretence, a true apostate from 
the Jewish law, and rose against him. His presence in 
the Temple caused a disturbance which the Roman sol- 
diers had great difficulty in quelling. It isa remarkable ~ 
circumstance that the Pharisees did all in their power to 
save him.t Paul perceiving the kindness of these popu- 
lar chiefs, uttered a fresh falsehood by exclaiming, “Men 
and brethren, Iam a Pharisce, the son of a Pharisee: of 
the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in 
question.”’{ Thus, he not only denied his.own doctrine 





* Acts, xxi. 20 and following. + Ibid. xxiii. 6 and following. 
t Ibid. 6. 


202 THE DEICIDES., 


in order to submit to the will of the Apostles, he went 
still further, and claimed the right to be reckoned among 
those Pharisean doctors whom Jesus had censured so 
severely. 

By this double disavowal of his past life he did not 
succeed in calming the irritation of the populace. The 
Roman tribune was compelled to arrest him, in order to 
put an end to the general agitation. He was confined 
in the prison of Czesarea; having claimed the title of a 
Roman citizen, he was at the close of two years sent to 
Rome, where he at first, in vain endeavoured to win 
over the Jewish colony inhabiting the city of the Cz- 
sars* to his doctrine, and where he soon after undertook 
the evangelisation of the otherinhabitants of the eternal 
city. 


IV. 


CouLD the former opinions of the Jews respecting Jesus 
Christ and his doctrine have undergone any modification 
during the period that we have just considered? What 
great revolution had been made in proof of the divinity 
of the founder of the new religion? None. Far from 
this, they had seen the most intimate disciples of the 
Nazarene reformer differ widely on the fundamental 
principles of the Gospel and on the means of its propa- 
gation. Discord arose in the very ranks of the apostles 
charged to effect the spread and the triumph of the word 
of Christ. Those even who had received his most secret 
instructions from the mouth of the master himself no 
longer adhered to the injunctions of the son of Mary. 
To that teaching which proclaimed the enduring autho- 
rity of the Jewish law, and which so forcibly urged on 
the twelve apostles the ‘obedience due to those seated 
in the chair of Moses’’} had succeeded a revolutionary 





* The Epistle of the Romans was written for this purpose. 


+ Matthew xxiii. 2 and the following. 
° 


THE DEICIDES. - 903 


teaching, by which the whole law, every ordinance and 
every tradition were unreservedly abolished. And thus 
the single authority of one man sufficed to accomplish 
this formal rupture between the Christian sect and the 
ancient Synagogue ;—a rupture devoid of all that was 
sacred, and based neither on divine authority nor on any 
public revelation, and having no cause save the will, or 
rather the perspicacity of the new prophet. 

Thus Paul, originally the disciple of the Pharisee Ga- 
maliel, wholly and simply assumed the place of Jesus; 
Paulinism overran and choked primitive Christianity in 
the germ. 

Yet more; the immediate disciples of the prophet 
of Galilee energetically resisted this revolutionary at- 
tempt of the evangeliser of the Gentiles. They opposed 
it in the name of him whose sole representatives and 
agents they were, and they compelled Paul to make a 
solemn recantation of his errors. What must the Jews 
have thought of these intestine quarrels, of the contest 
produced by this violent spirit of proselytism? What 
could it appear to them save that which: they actually 
recognised it to be—an essentially human work, against _ 
which the dictates of their conscience and their religious 
faith equally caused them to protest, and in which they 
recognised nought save a system of clever propagand- 
ism, pursued by methods and arctifices in which there 
was manifestly nothing of a supernatural or divine char- 
acter. 

Besides, the doccrine of Paul had a tendency to turn 
them aside ever more and more from the Gospel. In 
truth, what became in this system, of the prophecies so 
unanimously promising at the Messianic epoch, not only 
the absolute re-establishment of the throne and the law 
of Israel, but also the entire adhesion of all the peoples 
of the earth to the ordinances of the Mosaic code? 

To permit the pagan converts to Christianity to reject 
all the practices of the law, was to give the Jews irrefut- 


mT ae THE DEICIDES. 


able proof that the Messiah had not come, and to create 
in them a conviction that the days foretold by the pro- 
phets had not come. Besides, the condition of Judea, 
instead of improving, became daily more disastrous. The 
hour of that final struggle approached, in which Jerusa- 
lem, the city of David was to fall beneath the swords of 
the uncircumcised. Who then, was this Christ who, 
sent.to save Israel, left the nation more oppressed, more 
unhappy and more. menaced than before? Who were 
these apostles, the pretended ministers of God the Savi- 
our, who were powerless to break the yoke of the Romans 
and to deliver the sacred city? 

Far from demonstrating to the Jews the divinity of the 
Gospel, all these circumstances excited in them the most 
violent opposition. Being also wholly engrossed by final 
and desperate efforts to defend their expiring nationality, 
they were unable to check the growing influence of the 
Christian doctrine, and remained ignorant of the succes- 
sive triumphs of Paulinism, a designation much more 
appropriate than that of Christianity to the tenets of the 
new faith. The Jews held themselves entirely aloof, 
whilst struggling heroically against the invaders of their 
country and looking forward with unflinching hope to 
the advent of a deliverer. . 


THE DEICIDES. — * 205 


FOURTH BOOK. 


PAuL and Peter at Rome—Their preaching—Their punishment 
—Religion and the State—A glance at the characteristics of 
the society in Rome—Slavery—Conquest—Military rule— 
Pretorians—Prodigality of the public expenditure—Popular 
games—Private luxury—The -treasury—Depopulation of 
towns—Neglect of agriculture—General distress—Power of 
slaves and freedmen—Religious and moral degradation— 
School of Alexandria—Means employed by the Apostles for 
the attainment of their object—Secret societies—Philosophi- 
cal transactions—Influence on domestic circles. 


I 


In accordance with the natural sequence of events and 
in the interests of its future course, Christianity soon 
diverged into the channels traced for it by Paul, and to’ 
the earliest stage of which course the apostles had offered 
so impolitic a resistance. In fact, it soon became mani- 
fest to the heads of the new Church that the disciple of | 

Gamaliel had judged rightly in boldly rushing into the 
midst of pagan populations, without further troubling 
himself respecting the conversion of the Jews, and that 
he had adopted the wisest measures in seeking to attract 
the Gentiles by timely and appropriate concessions. 
The Jews were more inimical than ever to the Gospel 
doctrine as its natural consequences developed them- 
selves, those consequences necessarily being the entire 
renunciation of the laws of Moses and of the most essen- 
tial principles of the Sinaic revelation. The apostles 
soon became convinced that their sect would never gain 


206 THE DEICIDES. 


many adherents among the Hebrew people. Under 
these circumstances, had Christianity confined itseif to 
Judea, it would at the fall of Jerusalem have probably 
expired noiselessly and without results, as did the other 
Jewish sects, such as those of the Essenes, with which it 
had much affinity, and the Sadducees, of which not a 
trace remained behind. 

Besides, thanks to the indefatigable zeal of Paul, the 
apostles everywhere found churches organised, powerful 
associations established, and in the most important dis- 
tricts of the Roman Empire, strong bonds of union crea- 
ted which closely linked their new adherents. Thus they 
no longer hesitated. This first phase of Christianity 
offers a curious subject of study, for in it are displayed 
the means and the skillful combinations by which revo- 
lutions, social and religious, may be raised and devel- 
oped. 

Paul had been removed to Rome ie according to 
“the Acts of the Apostles,” he regained his liberty and 
was allowed to preach his doctrine unopposed. A num- 
erous colony of Jews had long been established in Rome. 
Paut undertook their conversion. Though, according 
to the Acts, he encountered well-nigh general incredu- 
lity among them, when he spoke to them of Jesus, of his 
Messianic character and divinity; yet it was not to be 
denied that he produced a deep impression on their minds, 
His influence on the Romans was far greater; for their 
curiosity had been previously excited concerning these 
Jews whose doctrine had begun to agitate the world. 
Paul’s superior intelligence soon caused him clearly to 
perceive that the capital of the Roman world was the real 
goal to which ali the forces of Christian proselytism 
should be directed. Whoever possessed Rome would 
exercise universal sway ; the subjugation of Rome there-_ 
fore, became thenceforth his single aim and his all-en- 
grossing idea. He abandoned the other centres of his 
earlier apostolate, he no longer thought of visiting the 


. 


THE DEICIDES. 207 


Churches of Greece and Asia Minor. He took up his 
abode at Rome and on it concentrated all his efforts. 

But it was unadvisable to betray, in the very centre of 
the Empire of the Czsars, that any division existed 
among the chiefs, or in the teachings ofthe rising Church. 
It is to be surmised that Paul, by means of his secret 
correspondence with the other apostles, had made clear 
to them the grandeur and importance of the aim that he 
pursued ; and had at length won them over to his system. 
In fact, we learn that Peter, in his turn quitted Judea 
and hastened to Rome, there to unite unreservedly and 
unconditionally with the far-seeing apostle of the Gen- 
tiles. Peter was thus finally converted to the Paulian 
idea, of which the correctness became daily more mani- 
fest. We see in his Epistles that he no longer hesitates 
to recommend the doctrines of Paul to the acceptance 
of the faithful,* and, notwithstanding the obscure pas- 
sages occurring in his letters, Paul, he declares, deserves 
to be respected equally with the apostles and the pro- 
phets. 

And the two chiefs of the apostolate, henceforth united 
in thought and of one accord as to the course to be pur- 
sued, assailed ancient polytheism in the very heart of . 
the empire, in the certain persuasion that if they suc- 
ceeded in obtaining the victory, the whole world would 
be in their power. At this crisis too, we see that the 
Christians of Judea abandoned Jerusalem, not only be- 
cause, according to Eusebius’st account, they feared acts 
of retaliation in the heart of the city on the part of the 





* St. Peter’s Epistles, 2nd Epistle, iii. 15. The simultane. 
ous presence of Peter and Paul at Rome is denied by histori- 
cal criticism ; but the Acts of the Apostles on Christian condi- 
tion are explicit on this point; there is no just cause for its 
non-admission. 7 

+ Eusebius History, iii. 3. 


a ¢ 


208 THE DEICIDES. 


Romans, but evidently also to achieve a final separation 
from the worshippers of the ancient law, of whose con- 
version they could no longer entertain a thought or a 
hope. 

Thus Rome became the seat of the’: new doctrine, and - 
probably also of a great number of those who had been 
exiled from Jerusalem. Peter and Paul undertook the 
-evangelisation of the Romans on a vast scale, especially 
of the most influential and most exalted statesmen of 
the Empire. The Epistle of Paul to Titus informs us 
that eminent functionaries, such as Pudens, the senator, 
early figured among the converts. But this zealos pro- 
selytism was the signal for persecution. Nero, who 
reigned at that time, ordered the two apostles to be 
placed in irons. Accused ofa design for the subversion 
of the Empire, they were condemned and crucified on 
Mount Janiculum, the site of the dwelling-place of the 
whole Jewish colony. Thus commenced the persecution 
‘of Christians and Jews alike, the latter not being at that 
fatal period distinguished from the former, either in 
Rome or Judea.* 

It is here necessary to inquire into the motives which 
prompted the emperors and their agents to the exercise 
of such extreme severity against the disciples of Jesus. 





a 

* The epistles of the Apostles abundantly prove that the ear- 
ly Christians were everywhere designated’as Jews, an appel- 
lation which they claimed, and ih which they gloried. On every 
occasion on which the Roman historians of the first century of 
the Church speak of them, they confound them with the Jews. 
In the “ History of Claudius,” by Suetonius, a curious passage 
exists on this subject. That author relates that the Emperor 
banished from Rome the Jews who were always creating dis- — 
turbances under the influence of a certain ‘“‘ Chrestus,” “Judzos, 
impulsore Chrestus,” This C/restus evidently points to Jesus 
Christ, or rather to the Christian sect, to whose disciples Sue- 
tonius misapplies the general name of Jews.—Suetonius, “The 
Twelve Czsars ; History of Claudius,” ch. xxv. 


THE DEICIDES. 209 


II. 


ANCIENT society was not based, as is that of the present 
day, on a division of Church and State, of the spiritual - 
and temporal. In this age even, as we are well aware, 
the application of this principle is a problem very diffi- 
cult of solution. The authority of Religion on the one 
hand, and of the power of the State on the other, are in- 
volved in an unremitting struggle for mutual encroach- 
ments, or in vain attempts to define the very boundary 
line between their respective departments. 

In the Roman world such a distinction was wholly 
unknown. The State was religion, and Religion was the 
State. Matters of religion and matters of policy were 
blended and merged into each other so entirely as to be 
wholly indivisible and indistinguishable. The Roman 
Pontiff was far more a political finclionary, than a spiri- 
tual mediator between man and the gods. Religious 
worship was associated with every action of life, whether 
public or private. The Pontiff declared for peace or 
war, and decided as to the expediency of political enact- 
ments. He declared according to the auguries, when it 
was right to act or to abstain from action, and,to his 
sovereign voice every conscience submitted and before 
him every head was bowed. Thus Religion and the 
State were indissolubly united, or rather, they formed 
but a single institution. To blaspheme the gods was to 
attack public authority in its most august phase. Did 
not the Emperor himself,-in fact, exercise important 
sacerdotal functions, as indicated by his title, ““ PONTI-. 
FEX MAXIMUS”? Did he not even occasionally lay 
claim to divinity? Any infringement of the religious 
svstem of antiquity shook the social edifice ; according 
to the political notions of that time, the enemies of pag-_ 
anism were manifestly the enemies of the State. 

Long before, Socrates had been pitilessly sacrificed in 


210 THE DEICIDES. 


the midst of light and frivolous Athens, for having pro- 
mulgated a doctrine opposed to the polytheistic creed 
of Greece. What must have been the condition of things 
in the Rome of the Czsars, where the religious question 
_ was so intimately linked with the interests of the Em- 
pire ? 7 

The persecution of the Christians, if viewed from this 
point, is perfectly explicable. They were considered 
revolutionists, as they undoubtedly were, whose doctrines 
in:attacking pagan theology at the same time threatened 
political society. They were condemned by the legal 
authorities, who were naturally alarmed at their predica- 
tions and at the gradual spread of their secret associa- 
tions. But pagan society no longer possessed the force 
necessary to resist the spiritualising influence of the 
Bible, transmuted into the Gospel. Of this a rapid glance 


at the Roman world of this period will offer us sufficient 
proof. | 


III. 


SLAVERY was the wen on the face. of ancient society. 
By its means it had existed, by it it was destined to 
perish. Slavery was the product of war, that war which 
was the sole source of power in the eyes of conquering 
Rome.* 

~ Conquest and usurpation were the only means by 
which the Roman Empire had extended and gradually 





* “Such a nation of antiquity,” says Michelet, “may boast 
like the savages of America, of having swallowed up fifty peo- 
- ples,” (“History of France,” i. 95). 

The reader’s attention is directed to the interesting work of 
Mr. Moreau Christophe, “On the Right to Immunity from Work 
in the Greek and Roman Republic,” and to the statistics relat- 
ing to the slaves inhabiting the Empire. In Rome, the number 
of the citizens was only half that of the slaves (Moreau Christo- 
tophe, p. 152 and following.) . 


THE DEICIDES. 211 


overrun all the then known world. By means of the 
courage of its numerous soldiery, the Rome of the Cz- 
sars, while placing its yoke on the neck of all peoples, 
had gathered into its midst a countless multitude of 
vassals and slaves. Springing from an abuse of power, 
Rome could only maintain its authority by force. The 
principle, ““Vze victis’—‘‘Woe to the vanquished,” was 
the moving pivot of the policy of the sovereign people. 
They subjected the prisoners taken in battle to the most 
cruel servitude. They placed the conquered towns and 
nations under the authority of petty tyrants and fierce 
proconsuls who, by their extortion, their violence and 
their savage despotism, outraged every sentiment of 
justice and humanity. Rome frequently found it neces- 
sary to have recourse to the most energetic measures, 
in order to repress the outbursts of the nations quiver- 
ing under her yoke, and to stifle their ever-recurrent at- 
tempts at rebellion. Servile wars again had several 
times placed Rome on the very brink of destruction. 

In order to ward off these dangers and to check, if 
not wholly to appease these elements of disorder and 
anarchy, the Empire was obliged to place its sole reli- 
ance on a gigantic development of its military power. 
The army had become the basis and the essential condi- 
tion of universal dominion. The authority of which 
the senate and people had been gradually divested had 
taken refuge in the camp. Thus, the legions having 
become aware that they were the-sole support of the 
Empire and the sovereign masters of the situation, sold 
their allegiance and their co-operation at a high price. 
The ‘‘Prztorian Guards” soon became the masters of 
Rome, making and unmaking emperors, putting up the 
throne to auction, and dethroning on the morrow the 
Cesars they had elected to-day. This military despot- 
ism, that is material force in its most barbaric phase, is 
always an indication of the decline of states. It was easy 
to perceive at this gloomy period, that the Empire was 


212 ! THE DEICIDES. 


approaching its dissolution. The head was too feeble 
to guide the immense body, composed of heterogeneous 
members, which constituted the Roman world. 

The excessive development of the military power ne- 
cessarily caused a like inordinate increase in the public 
expenditure. Notwithstanding the tribute she exacted 
from the conquered nations, Rome was powerless to 
meet the requirements of her situation. Numerous 
standing armies, maintained at great expense at.every 
corner of the Empire, absorbed an amount wholly dis- 
proportionate to the resources of the State; while, on 
the other hand, a shadow of popularity could be retained 
only by indulging the caprices of the populace, who, 
enervated and corrupted by imperial luxury, demanded | 
bread and public games, as a compensation for the liberty 
denied them (panem et circenses).* This distribution of 
rations and these public games involved an enormous 
squandered outlay. Millions were swallowed up in the 
combats of gladiators and wild beasts, to supply which 
the deserts of Asia and Africa were depopulated. Private 
luxury had at the same time attained to a degree of in- 
conceivable refinement. Who has not heard of the Lu- 
culluses of Imperial Rome?t The dinners of the patri- 
cians of the Empire and of the epicureans of this de- 
praved period, sometimes cost more than a million. 
The lampreys of the tanks were fed with the flesh of 
slaves, and no sacrifice was considered too great when 


+. 





* In order to lessen the burden on the public treasury, the 
Emperors demanded subventions for the expenses of the games 
from those on whom they conferred the highest public digni- 
ties, and from those who received titles. The amount of this | 
subvention rose, in the time of Claudius, to eighty millions of 
sesterces, nearly six millions of francs, (see Moreau Christo- 
phe, loc. cit., Code Theodosien I. II. xv. 6; De SueOare 
I. XIII. et LII. vi. 4, De pretoribus). 

+ Code Theodosian, book x. p. 31. 


THE DEICIDES. 213 


its object was to procure and to have sent to Romea 

single fish from the Black Sea. The products of the 

whole known world were daily gathered together on the 

tables of the Roman aristocracy, purchased by the spoils 
of all the conquered nations. 

But in order to meet this lavish public and private 
expenditure, recourse was had to the most violent op- 
pression and to the most disastrous expedients. The 
“Clerk of the Treasury,” the necessary medium of all 
these excesses—the sole purveyour of these orgies, ex- 
tended his power in proportion to the needs of the Em- 
pire. The insatiable avidity of these fiscal agents, who 
were themselves responsible for the collection of the 
imposts, soon became insupportable. In presence of 
these growing demands and of the greed of these tax- 
gatherers, the cities became depopulated and their in- 
habitants fled tothe fields. Thecurials who in particular 
cases sustained all the burden of the public charges, 
vainly endeavoured to evade by flight the melancholy 
honours of their office. Besides, whither could they fly, 
in order to escape the tyranny of a power whose sway 
extended over the entire world? ‘The fields offered no 
refuge from exactions, under the burdens of which the | 
inhabitants of the towns had succumbed.* The pitiless 
_jise did not abandon his prey so easily. _ : 

Misery and dejection made fearful progress under the 
influence of these combined causes. The people, wrap- 
ping themselves in their garment of slavery, crouched 


in terror and despair on the earth. Asa beast of burden 
c A 





* Sometimes an effort was made to alleviate by legal enact- 
ment the condition of the settler, and then the proprietor com- 
plained of his inability to pay the taxes.. At another time the 
law sacrificed the settler to the proprietor and plunged him 
into slavery, (Michelet, “ History of France,” t. i. p. 104). 
Constant in Cod. aera aunty xi, tit. 49° Cod. Tustinighlh lib. 
xlvii. tit. 51. 


214 THE DEICIDES. 


lies down under repeated blows and refuses to rise again, 
so nothing could induce them to resume the cultivation 
of the soil. Vainly did the emperors endeavour, by hold- 
ing out promises of redemption and reward, to re-people 
the deserted plains. Nothing checked the increase of 
the evil, the desert daily extended and the desolation 
became ever more intense. 

Another fact is no less worthy of being cited: this 
violent, oppressive and tyrannieal society was neverthe- 
less dependent on the slaves whom it subjected to its 
yoke. The Romans, like all other aristocratic and con- 
quering races, looked upon all the details of domestic 
life and upon all questions of material economy with 
profound contempt. All matters of trade and commerce 
were committed by them to their slaves. The Roman 
citizen, owing his aggrandisement to war and to the 
power of eloquence, considered as unworthy of him 
everything save arms, horses, bodily exercises, liberal 
professions, the life of the Forum and the ordering of 
public affairs.* The slaves were the bankers, specula- 
tors and exercisers of industry of all kinds; they thus 
accumulated savings which enabled them one day, if 
they understood to win for themselves the favour of their 
masters, to secure their manumission, This class of 
emancipated slaves who were governed by a specific 
legislation, formed an important body in the state, and 
one which gradually acquired great influence with the 
Government.t It was rare for the first ministers and 





* See Moreau Christophe, “To the Right of Immunity from 
Work and of the Organisation of Servile Labour in the Grecian 
and Roman Republics,” p. 23 and following. 

+ Tacitus declares in his Annals (book xiii. pp. 26 and 27) 
that at that epoch the Roman people was composed almost 
wholly of these freedmen. (See in the “ Digest,” book xxxviii. 


tit. r. the laws which regulated the condition of these freedmen 
in Rome.) 


THE DEICIDES. 215 


the intimate favourites of the emperors to be other than 
powerful freedmen, who directed the imperial policy as 
they willed. In fact, these slaves who furnished so many 
remarkable men and eminent writers in the age of the 
Ceesars, were particularly characterised by intelligence 
and aptness of intellect. 

Thus the race of slaves virtually governed the Roman 
world, for in their hands was centred all the economical 
action of the state; they raised themselves to power, 
whether concealed or avowed, at the side of the empe- 
rors which associated them with all the affairs of the 
Empire. In fine, they displayed intellectual qualities of 
a far higher order than did the Romans at the time of 
their decline. 

And at the same moment when all these causes of 
decay and anarchy pervaded Roman society, hoarse 
murmurs were already heard in the distance, proceeding 
from the gloomy forests of Germany: the threatening 
voice of the savage peoples who were preparing with 
confused agitation to pour down, like a living avalanche, 
on the Empire of the Czsars. 

Thus was Imperial Rome slowly sinking beneath the 
action of an incurable evil. Slavery, the arrogance and 
despotism of armed legions, the development of lawless 
luxury, the corruption of morals, the rapacity of the isc, 
the misery of the people, the insufficiency of agricultural 
products, the hatred of the vanquished nations, the 
struggles of half-subdued lands, and at a distance, the 
threatened invasion of the peoples of the North, formed 
the elements of the coming ruin. 

The ancient empire was crumbling visibly into dust, 
and the breaking forth of a violent social revolution was 
inevitable and imminent throughout the world. 

In all that concerned religion and morals, a like ter- 
rible confusion prevailed. A portentous voice had been 
heard exclaiming, ‘‘The pagan gods approach their 
doom!” In truth, all the ancient forms of belief were. 


216 |“ [HE DEICIDES. 


gradually yielding to the insidious influence of a scepti- 
cal and satirical philosophy since the then already remote 
period at which the great orator of the Republic, Cicero 
ridiculed the priests and augurs and expressed his sur- 
prise that they could look upon each other without 
laughing. In how much bitter sarcasm, in how many 
violent attacks had not the satirical writers of Rome in- 
dulged on that whole system of sensual and artistic myth- 
ology which had secured the homage of all mortals 
throughout a period of 4000 years! | 

Greece which, notwithstanding the political supremacy 
of Rome, had retained the direction of all intellectual 
progress, had in its turn undergone a radical change in 
respect of its philosophical teachings; the minds. of its 
great thinkers had long been engrossed in the anxious 
search for the “Unknown God;’’ for Greece had be- 
stowed her most illustrious philosophers on the Alex- 
andrian school, especially Aristotle and Plato, the latter, 
it is true, under a highly spiritualised form. 

In consequence of the powerful impulse which the 
Alexandrian school had imparted to the public mind, to 
it were attracted all the attention and all the intellectual 
power of the ancient world. Being linked by its admi- 
ration of the theories of Plato to the Hellenic philoso- 
phy, it had originated a spiritualistic doctrine, of which 
the origin and the descent has been sufficiently indicated 
by its appellation—“ Neo-platonism.” The habitual in- - 
tercourse between the sages of Alexandria with Judea 
and the East had gradually introduced into the Alex- 
andrian philosophy the mystic ideas pertaining ta sev- 
eral oriental sects, combined with the Monotheistic 
principles of Judea. This, on the neutral ground of the 
great Egyptian city, a certain approximation had been 
effected between the Unitarian and Polytheistic systems 
of belief, and the School of Alexandria had finally de- 
tached itself from mythological idolatry, in order to be- 
come more closely connected with loftier doctrines. The 


¢ 


3 THE DEICIDES. 217 


end and aim of Alexandrian philosophers was a vast 
eclecticism, tending to identify and to fuse in one and 
the same formula, all the good points of the several sys- 
tems. Above all, it sought while thus. placed between 
the East and the West, to reconcile the wisdom of Greece 
with that of the East. But this very Grecian wisdom, 
being then subjected to the irresistible influence of com- 
binations of ideas often the precursors, and subsequently 
the causes of great moral revolutions, was actually at 
that moment passing away with the religions and the 
institutions of antiquity; while there came forth from 
the East and principally from Judea, a new spirit, a whole 
world of ideas and doctrines, destined powerfully to in- 
fluence the philosophy of the Neo-platonists. 

Frem the East was conveyed to Alexandria the idea 
of the Divine Unity, set forth with so much lucidity by 
Philo; but from the East, Alexandria also received com- 
bined with the traditions of Gnostics and the Cabala, 
an insuperable tendency to mysticism.* Although ime 
bued with Jewish ideas amalgamated with the mystic 
notions borrowed by the Hebrews from the Babyloni- 
ans, the Alexandrian school did not wholly break with 
the philosophical theories of Plato. It retained the Trini- 
tarian doctrine of the Divine attributes of the great 
Greek philosopher, but being at the same time power- 
fully impressed with the Jewish principles, it admitted 
the Unity of God in its most abstract signification. This 
God nevertheless has three conditions, and one might 
say, “‘He is God absolutely; God as intelligence; God 
as power.” 

Man should seek to resemble God; how can he re- 
semble Him better than by raising himself and merging 
himself into Him? Is this unification possible? Yes; 





* See in the general history of pistowe pry by Cousin, his 
remarks, Pp» 161, 


218 THE DEICIDES. 


replied the Alexandrians, the soul may also attain to a. 
condition which shall place it in direct communication 
with the Divine Unity; this condition is that of ecstasy, 
in which the spirit succeeds in separating itself from its 
corporeal dwelling, and lives for a moment an existence 
wholly immaterial and celestial. 

Alexandrian mysticism was soon transformed into 
theurgy. There is but one step from ecstasy to miracle; 
the mystics of Neo-platonism rapidly degenerated into 
the claimants to miraculous and supernatural Spiritual- 
ism, and its follies were in existence at Alexandria. 
Neo-platonists were not only philosophers but magicians 
and hierophants: they evoked demons, cured human 
infirmities, worked miracles, and disseminated the strang- 
est superstitions among the mass, 

We perceive, and we shall presently examine, the 
numerous points of contact that existed between the 
Alexandrian school and Christianity. In it more was 
involved than a new philosophy; it included an entirely 
new system of religious tenets on which Judaism had 
stamped its indelible mark, and by which Christianity 
was destined to profit. These new doctrines inflicted 
mortal wounds on the existing religion of the world, and 
the rising waters of scepticism daily overflowed the altars 
of the Olympian gods. 

Spiritualism meanwhile, on the other hand, acquired 
more and more dominion over the world of morals. 
Mankind was weary of the materialism of the, pagan 
worship. These gods formed.of dust and flesh, these 
divinities, preys to stormy passions and to all human 
infirmities, and receiving wounds which needed a physi- 
cian for their cure, began to be regarded with contempt 
and disdain. Excess of sensualism, in’ accordance with 
the reaction natural to the human mind, ending in dis- 
gust, restored all souls to a love and respect for spiritu- 
alistic. ideas. 

We have here hastily sketched a picture of Roman 


THE DEICIDES. 219 


society ; it is thence manifest how wholly it was prepared 
for the work which rising Christianity sought to accom- 
plish, and how easy was the transformation of a society 
so disorganised and enfeebled in all its elements, if that 
transformation was committed to skilful hands. 


IV. 


WHEN we remember that the first disciple of Jesus who 
arrived at Rome was Paul, that intelligent apostle who 
had so well comprehended the true conditions of the 
dissemination of Christianity among the Gentiles ; Paul, 
the great polemical diplomatist of the new Church, we 


are no longer surprised at the rapid spread of the Gospel 
in the empire of the Czsars. 


The apostle of the Gentiles had no hesitation in first 
addressing the slaves :*—“ Wherefore thou art no more 
a servant, but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God 
through Christ. Stand fast in the liberty wherewith 
Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again in 
the yoke of bondage. For as many of you as have been 
baptised into Christ have put on Christ. There is nei- 
ther Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there 
is neither male nor female, for ye all are one in Christ 


. Jesus.” 


This fearless and novel language, these great prin- 
ciples of liberty and equality were well calculated to ex- 
cite and inflame the minds of the slaves, and to fill them 
with intoxicating pride, hope, and joy. 

The new faith thus promised not only universal eman- 
cipation, but reproducing the ancient theory of the 
Gracchi, it suggested an expectation of a vast system of 
community of possession, according to,which all the 





* Epistle to the Romans, vi.; Epistle to the Galatians, iii. 
and v. 


2200 -— THE DEICIDES. 


goods of this world were to’ be equally divided among 
those who entered the bosom of the church.* 

Finally, the Gospel said to all the lowly and all the 
oppressed, ‘Those who were the first shall be the last, - 
and he that is greatest among you shall be your,ser- 
vant.’’+ It is superfluous to enlarge on the tact displayed 
in these professions of faith ; they must have been cordi- 
ally welcomed by all the slaves of imperial Rome. The 
emperors were not deceived as to their importance, as 
to the influence which they exercised on the fate of the 
empire. They therefore pursued the ardent preachers 
with extreme rigour who, under the garb of a new reli- 
gion, were manifestly inducing a servile war of a much 
more formidable character than that of which Spartacus 
had been the moving spirit, at the time of the republic. 


Persecution imparted fresh vigour to the rising sect, 
and the very presence of danger seemed to exercise an 
increasing fascination on the neophytes. The persecuted 
Christians instituted in Rome itself that system of secret 
societies which has formed in all ages the revolutionist’s 
‘most efficacious mode-of action. | 

These mysterious meetings, held in the night in the 
catacombs and so often interrupted and stained with 
blood by the soldiers and agents of the Roman police, 
were virtually assemblies of conspirators, excited to 
frenzy by religious fanaticism, swearing by a new sym- 
bol to annihilate tyranny, and resolved at the cost of 
life, to destroy ancient society and replace it by a bo- 
dy-politic founded on the principle of universal equa- 
lity and liberty, with the Gospel for its code, and Christ 
for its master. © | 

In all ages persevering action on the part of these 
secret societies has issued in the attainment of their 





* Acts of the Apostles, iv. 32. | 
+ Matthew, xx. 25 and following ; xxiii. r1and following. 


THE DEICIDES. 221 


ends. At that period of general decline and depravity, 
their success was yet more assured. 


VI. 


AT the same time that the founders of Christianit$ 
acted thus on the social condition of the state, they ex- 
ercised a like influence in the domain of philosophy. 
With the same perspicacity which caused them to recog- 
nise Rome as the pivot and centre of politicai society, 
and that tc conquer Rome was to subjugate the universe, 
did they likewise perceive that to triumph at Alexandria 
was to subjugate the world of intellect. We haveabove 
stated the already numerous points in which the Alex- 
andrian philosophy assimilated with the doctrines of 
Christianity the doctrines of chances of the Platonists" 
of the second Academy, the Pyrrhonism, the Empiricism, 
and the Atheism of several political, religious, and moral 
doctrines, as to the progress of civilisation and the cor- 
ruption of manners. <A strong tendency was evinced by 
Alexandrian philosophy to Eclecticism, probably arising 
either from reason or alarm. A disciple of Philo, Anti- 
ochus was the first to attempt this compromise, in refer- 
' ence to the doctrines of Xeno, Plato, and Aristotle. 
Potamo of Alexandria followed in the same path. Am- 
monius Saccas went still further, and by combining 
Christianity with the doctrines of the East and of Greece, 
he evolved a system of Gnostics having many points of 
resemblance with the Bible and the Gospel. 

There was but a step to be made on each side, in order 
to attain to a perfect agreement and assimilation: the 
purely ideal trinity of Plato and the neo-platonist, was 
the ground on which the representatives of the ancient 
school and the adepts of the new faith met and joined 
hands. 

Mystic philosophy easily recognised the platonic hypo- 


I2 


222 THE DEICIDES. 


stasis in the triple figure of the Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost, though indivisible in the Divine Unity. The in- 
carnation of an Eternal and Infinite Being in a human 
form, the tradition which set forth that he had lived 
a shorter or longer period on earth presented certainly 
a marked difference:.this concession was demanded by 
the requirements of the times, and the utility of the 
compromise was so evident that the principle was ad- 
mitted without hesitation. In this was involved a final 
rupture with the monotheism of the Hebrews; but this 
innovation was so opportune that we may justly con- 
sider it to have been one of the causes of the triumph 
of Christianity. 

Finally, there was another, and that the most noble 
and most important circumstance by which Christianity 
exercised dominion over ancient society. Its very first 
efforts were directed against the moral depravity and 
corruption of all classes of society. Christianity spoke 
in the name of public and private morality, in the cause 
of human dignity and of the sanctity of the domestic 
hearth, in that of violated chastity and of virtue daringly 
outraged, in the name of the eternal laws revealed by 
God, Who sooner or later chastises triumphant vice. 

The moment was favourable for the utterance of these 
stern predictions. The Sybarites of the Roman world, 
after having plucked the rose of every desire, after hav- 
ing drained the cup of sensual pleasure to the dregs, be- 
came the victims of satiety and of an intense weariness 
produced by their inability to invent new enjoyments ; 
and young girls, despised by the profligates of imperial 
Rome, covered their heads with the veil of sadness 
and uttered a protest against the horrors of this cen- 
tury of infamy. 

There then, the apostles of Christianity sought and 
found amid these various victims of materialism and ini- 
quity, amid these sorrows of the domestic hearth, their 
most powerful support. When with the Bible and Gos- 


THE DEICIDES. 223 


pel in their hands, they preached the sanctity of the mar- 
riage tie, respect for parents, purity of morals, all the 
women of the Roman city ranged themselves under their 
banner. By the aid of the women they gradually came 
to exercise an irresistible influence in the family circle. 
By their aid too, were gained over husbands and sons, 
previously unconsciously influenced by the example of 
their mothers, wives, and sisters. 


And while this effect was daily and hourly in opera- 
tion in all houses, the enfranchised slaves were on their 
part acting on the minds of the emperors who, alarmed 
at the progress of the new sect and dismayed at the de- 
population of towns and fields, had recourse, but too 
late, to measures all governments adopt in their decline 
in order to retain the power which was slipping from 
their hand. 


They uttered those words of liberty, equality, duty, 
and moral and political reform, which had been such 
visible instruments of success when pronounced by the 
lips of the persecuted adherents of the rising Church.* 


They became converts to Christianity, in order to se- 
cure the adherence of a people which had risen in its’ 
despair, invoking the death of the empire and calling 
loudly on the barbarians for aid.t It is superfluous to 
seek for supernatural reasons to explain the triumph:of 
Christianity in the empire of the Czsars. The causes 
that we have just analysed are sufficiently evident and 





* See on this point Constant., Code Theod., book i, tit. 7, 
law Ist. Gratian and Honorius organised public assemblies 
for the purpose of discussing popular interests (laws of 382 
Sive integra, and of 418 Cod. Theod., book xii. tit. 12.) 

+t Mamertin, “In panegyr. Juliani.” Salvien, De Providen- 
tia, v. 


224 . THE DEICIDES. 


explain that singular concatenation of political and mo- 
ral events, of which Christianity skillfully availed itself 
to invade and to conquer the Roman world, and by 
which, thanks to its triumph in the very centre of the 
empire, it became CATHOLICISM, that is to say univer- 
sal authority. 


THE DEICIDES. ie 225 


FIFTH BOOK. 


THE Works of God and Works of man—Slow progress of 
Christianity—Schisms and heresies—No heresies among the 
Jews—Analysis of the principal heresies arising during the 
first three centuries—Council of Nice—Final establishment 
of Roman Catholicism—General outline of the Catholic 
Church since that period—View necessarily taken thereof 
by the Jews. 


I. 


WE do not pretend to give here a history of Christianity 
and its successive development, but it appears to us that 
it would be interesting to enquire by what concurrence 
of events the separation of the first Christians from Ju- 
daism was induced ; further, by what skillful means they - 
prepared and succeeded in, their design of universal 
dominion. 

This aim was steadily pursued during several centuries; 
amid every kind of danger, and horrible persecutions, 
The chiefs of the new religion required dauntless courage 
and indomitable perseverance, in order to hold aloft 
the banner of their faith. More than three centuries 
elapsed before Christianity succeeded in seizing the 
sceptre, and in seating itself on the throne at the right 
hand of the emperors. We leave to others the investi- 
gation of the miraculous element in this slow and labori- 
ous formation of a new society. We recognise in it 
naught save the logical and natural results of humar 
events. The same characteristics have marked all die 
revolutionaryepochs, 


226 THE DEICIDES. 


More than three centuries have now elapsed since 
the voice of Luther evoked an important reform in the 
sphere of religion. Again, nearly eighty years since, 
France gave the signal to the world of a new political 
era and of a new civilisation. Yet neither of these all- 
important events has as yet attained to its complete de- 
velopment. Such is the course .of social facts; thus 
slowly advance the conquests of human intelligence; it 
is the essential character of the works of man to meet 
with obstacles, and to attain their end only after a long 
period of difficulty and labour. 

Whatever may be the opinion which should be formed 
of the character of its founder, it is yet evident that 
early Christianity obeyed, in its development, this su- 
preme law of humanity. The first propagators, the 
Apostles availed themselves with remarkable intelligence 
of all favourable circumstances ; they were powerfully 
seconded by the general social condition of their time; 
their efforts were guided by a practical common sense 
that we cannot too much admire; and notwithstanding 
all these propitious elements, it was necessary to reach 
the age of Constantine—that is to say, the year 300 of 
the new era—ere the object proposed by St. Paul the 
true founder of Christianity, was attained. But it did not 
suffice to conquer ; the important point was that it should 
hold its ground. Thus the Christian Church had not 
only to contend with the political society by which it 
was surrounded and which it aspired to rule, but it had 
also to defend itself from the internecine dissensions which 
every moment imperilled its fundamental principle. In 
fact, Christianity had scarcely propounded to the moral 
world the unfathomable doctrine of the Man-God, ere 
the anarchy of schisms and heresies arose in its midst. 

Judaism had never presented the spectacle of those 
violent struggles of dogmatic principles, which have so 
often marked and disturbed the Christian Church, and 
stained its altars with blood. The very simplicity of the 


& 


THE DEICIDES. 227 


Jewish faith rendered similar contests impossible. The 
only alternative was Atheism, or a belief in the Unity of 
God, the basis of the law of Israel. Thus no really schis- 
matic and opposing sect existed among the Jewish 
people. The Samaritans preferred their mountain to 
that of Zion. The Sadducees did not believe in the im- 
mortality of the soul, while on the contrary, the Phari- 
sees unanimously professed full faith in a future exist- 
ence. The Essenes devoted themselves to a contem- 
plative life, and practised the greatest purity of morals 
with exemplary fidelity. But the Decalogue and the 
Bible continued to be the common belief of all these. 
moral associations of Judaism. All alike proclaimed the 
Unity and Indivisibility of the Eternal God ; nota single 
heretical principle obtained among them. 

It was not the same in Christianity. The complicated 
and incomprehensible nature of its Trinitarian doctrine, 
its numerous compromises with Paganism soon caused 
various warring sects to arise around it, which endan- 
gered the very basis on which it rested. 


Il. 


THE most violent and formidable opposition offered to 
Christianity proceeded from the Jews who imputed to it, 
not without reason, misrepresentation of the words of 
the Bible and of the Prophets, in order to deduce there- 
from ideas, promises, and conclusions which they did 
not contain, in support of the new dogma and the new 
God. We may easily understand the force of the objec- 
tions raised to the Christians by the Jews who had re- 
mained faithful to the ancient law, if we peruse the con- 
troversial treatise written by St. Justin towards the close 
of the second century, under the title—“Dialogue with 
Tryphon.” This Tryphon, according to the text, was a 
Jew who had taken up his abode in Greece and was 
strongly imbued with Hellenic philosophy. But it is 


% 


228 THE DEICIDES. 


rather an ideal type of the Judaism of that time and an 
echo of its arguments against Christianity. 

The oberservations of Tryphon are weighty ; he denies 
the divinity and messianic character of Jesus Christ, 
and what is very remarkable, he even calls in question 
his existence and his appearance here below. “Whether 
he was born and where he dwelt,’’ says he, “is entirely 
unknown.” St. Justin, on his part, discusses with 
warmth; he affirms that the ancient law was given for 
Judea alone, and that it was thenceforth abolished; he 
assumes especially (and that assumption is the starting- 
point of a system of reasoning by which Christianity 
radically altered the signification of the Scriptures), that 
the Old Testament should be understood only figurat- 
ively, and that the literal text conceals a wholly spiritual 
and svmbolical meaning. Howeverthis may be, the zeal 
which St. Justin displays in this controversy reveals all 
the danger which the rising Church incurred from the 
attitude which'the Jews had assumed. And simultane- 
ously with this struggle between the synagogue and 
Christianitv, what dangerous sects arose! 

Innumerable were the heresies in the first century of 
the Church. These had their origin chiefly in the pro- 
tests of reason against the mysteries which Christianity 
introduced to the world. The new theories as to the 
nature of God, infinite yet indwelling a finite form—as to 
the trinity, at one and the same time, one and many ; on 
the Consubstantiality of the Father and the Son; on 
the Eucharist or the real presence of Jesus Christ in the 
two elements of bread and wine, gave rise to the most 
serious objections in the domain of philosophy. Heresies 
also resulted from the conflict of the old spirit with the 
new, from the natural and inevitable mixture of pagan 
ideas with Christian principle, which formed a difficult 
combination. Again, these heresies derived support 
from the opposition of the Jews who, interpreting the 
Scriptures in a different sense and preserving the Heb- 


THE DEICIDES, 229 


rew tradition in all its purity, furnished terrible weapons 
to the heretics for their attacks on Christianity. Finally, 
above all these elements of conflict and schism, rose the 
love of the supernatural and the fascinations it exercised ; 
a crowd of adherents rallied round every newand clever 
impostor who, taking advantage of public credulity, 
pretended to be endowed with miraculous power, and 
thenceforth presented himself as a messenger and an 
exponent of the will of the Most High. 


The Ebionites were the first sectarians who in the 
earliest days of Christianity, denied the divine origin 
of Jesus, declared themselves disciples of St. Peter, in 
opposition to the followers of St. Paul, and upheld the 
necessity of strict adherence to the observances pre- 
scribed by the Hebrew~ law. 


- Another sect, the Cerinthians, believed-in a sort of 
incarnation of the spirit of Christ in the shape of a man 
named Jesus. 


Two famous heresiarchs, Shtubiiis and Basilidus 
taught that the God of the Jews was only an inferior 
order of angel, who desiring to subjugate all nations, 
had awakened the resistance of all princes, which con- 
tinued until the time when the sovereign God had sent 
his first-born Vous to deliver the human race from the 
power of the inferior angels. This Vous had been de- 
nominated Jesus while on the earth; it was not he 
who was crucified by the Jews, but Simon whom he had 
invested with his form in order to deceive his execu- 
tioner. Hence the inference, that neither confession, 
nor the adoration of the crucified was to be practised. 
Basilidus believed in the metempsychosis, and that far 
from subduing his passions, man should yield himself to _ 
them without reserve. 


The Gnostics, while submitting to Jesus Christ, saw 
in him only a man born like all others, distinguished 
solely by his virtue. They proclaimed that to reach 


230 THE DEICIDES. 


unto God they must do all the works in the world, and 
in their orgies indulged in the most horrible excesses. 

The Valentinians, whose tenets were an incoherent 
mixture of those of the Gnostics and Saturnians, had 
formed a whole extravagant theogony, of shreds bor- 
rowed from Plato and the Christian mystics. 

The Sethians believed that Jesus was-only Seth re- 
- suscitated. 


The Cainites took Cain, Korah and Abiram for their 
gods. 

The Ophites affirmed that wisdom had transformed 
itself into a serpent, and worshipped Jesus Christ under 
the form of a reptile. 

We must mention besides, Marcion, who admitted two 
powerful principles, that of good and that of evil—who 
recognised in Jesus the saviour of the pagans, but not 
the Messiah promised by the God of the Jews.. Monta- 
nus, who declared himself on his own authority a pro- 
phet, a thaumaturgus and Messiah, excited in his turn 
so formidable a heresy, that the intervention of several 
bishops became necessary, to check ‘the infatuation of 
the faithful, misled by the prophecies of the pretended 
seer. 

Tatian, who notwithstanding his wreibcsiainig in support 
of Christianity, denied that Jesus was directly and line- 
ally descended from David. 

With these conflicts of dogmatic principles were com- 
bined conflicts of personal ambition. Clever impostors, 
as we have already stated, succeeded in passing them- 
selves off as prophets and workers of miracles. Ambi- 
tious priests, such as Novatian and Fortunatus, aspiring 
to the highest ecclesiastical power, raised opposing 
altars. At this period the heresy of Paul of Samosatus 
violently agitated’ the whole of the Christian Church; it 
maintained that Jesus Christ’s birth was human, that he 
derived the beginning of his existence from Mary, but 
that he was transformed from a man into God. Paul ot 


THE DEICIDES. 231 


Samosatus was Bishop of Antioch, and this is enough to 
indicate how great was the scepticism which had pene- 
trated into the highest ranks of the priests. 

The object of the two councils of Antioch was to eradi- 
cate this heresy. 

As time advanced, the dacaiines opposed to the 
Church increased in extent and importance. First we 
have Manicheism, which recognising two contrary prin- 
ciples in the government of the world, subverted the 
systems of the Old and New Testaments; while its 
founder, Manes, accompanied by his twelve disciples de- 
clared himself the chief of the twelve apostles, and well- 
nigh succeeded in being accepted as a new Christ. 

Ere long Arianism arose, and its name and influence 

have not disappeared even up to thistime. The doctrine 
of Arius, its founder, an Alexandrian priest, may be 
summed up in this, the absolute denial of the divinity of 
Christ and of the possibility of there being Unity in the 
Trinity, or that the Son, being an emanation from the 
Father, could have the same GReine and eternal nature 
as God. 

He thus attacked the very Candution of Christianity; 
he annulled the compromise made with paganism, and 
with the exception of some details which did not affect 
any essential principle, returned to the unitarian aoehee 
of Judaism. 

The Church was conscious that if this heresy, which 
spread rapidly and widely, eventually triumphed, its ruin 
was inevitable. It opposed the Arians with extreme 
violence, as it felt secure of the support of Constantine; 
and the Emperor, by his conversion, speedily placed the 
spiritual sceptre of the Roman world in the hands of, 
Christianity. For the first time, the Church convoked 
an (Ecumenical Council (that is a universal council, com- 
posed of representatives of all the churches), to whom 
it deputed solemnly to judge and condemn this Arian 
heresy. This famous council was held. at Nice A, D. 325. 


232 THE DEICIDES. 


The important results of this Council are well known; 
it definitively fixed the doctrines of the Church and 
created Catholicism in the form it has retained till the 
present day. It was held publicly, in the presence of 
the Emperor Constantine, who, after having issued a_ 
decree granting liberty of conscience throughout the 
Empire, had himself called forth this solemn manifesta- 
tion of Christian doctrine. The Council of Nice drew 
up the famous articles of creed professed by, the Church 
under the name of “Credo,” which is its principal “Act 
of faith.” By it the divinity and consubstantiation of 
Jesus Christ were irrevocably established. Yet the Tri- 
nity was but partially consecrated in this important as- 
semblage. . “We also believe in the Holy Ghost,” simply 
declared the editors of the Nicean Creed, without adding 
that he was God equally with the Father and Son, and 
that he was combined with the other two elements of 
the Trinity, though forming a distinct person. This 
creed was however, not unanimously accepted by the 
members of the Council. Seventeen bishops refused to 
subscribe to it, a circumstance which proves how power-* 
ful was the influence exercised by the Arian party, and 


how greatly the Church was divided as to its fundamen- 
tal dogma. ! 


Iil. 


CATHOLICISM was established at this epoch and defini- 
tively superseded primitive Christianity. The dominion 
of the Church became universal. Based on the political 
power of the emperors who placed their gigantic autho- 
» rity at its disposal, and who had enforced the fulfilment 
of its decrees by measures of state, it completely subdued 
the Roman world. Its bishops in Council assembled, 
ruled in their turn all spiritual matters, to the very limits 
of the empire, and thus constituted a Catholic unity 
which pervaded all nations of the earth. 


THE DEICIDES. 233 


Ancient society did not-however, submit without fresh 
struggles. A violent reaction supervened, which for a 
long period, endangered the future and the existence of 
the Church. The Emperors frequently hesitated before 
bowing their necks to the yoke of the law of Christ. 
A few days sufficed to Julian the Apostate for the anni- 
hilation of the work originated by Constantine, and he 
subjected the dismayed Christians to new persecutions 
and martyrdom. Notwithstanding these obstinate con- 
tests between the ancient and the new world, the victory 
was no tonger doubtful and Catholicism soon extended 
its authority over all the peoples whom the esis acd had 
enslaved. : 

But varying sects, schisms and heresies continued to 
rend the bosom of the Church: _ Arianism, that energetic 
protest against the divinity of Christ, remained in force, 
despite the condemnation of Arius. Pelagius and Nes- 
torius consecutively opposed the Catholic doctrine. 
The efforts of numerous free-thinkers were also directed 
against the Church and especially against its infallibility, 
while the Jews. in their dispersions throughout the em- 
pire, amid the clanking of their chains, remained as a 
living and inflexible negation of the truth of Christianity. 

The Church, in presence of these opponents who later 
were to be followed by John Huss, Luther and Calvin, 
by whom Catholic unity was eventually to be destroved, 
wielded the same weapons as Paganism had directed 
against herself. She had recourse to force in support of 
her cause; she allied herself with the Czsars and in- 
voked their power and their legions to annihilate her 
enemies; she condemned: and persecuted those who 
dared to offer resistance; in, one word, she employed 
the same means for her own defence, which are used 
by every human power. Instead of seeking to teach 
and to convince by the light of the spirit, she enslaved 
body and mind and enforced her own acceptance by 
violence. These were, we must admit, the necessary 


234 THE DEICIDES. 


conditions of her preservation, The Church having de- 
clared herself to be eternal truth, was compelled to crush 
all errors and all resistance. But in this very necessity 
is not mere human power attired in the sacred garb of 
religion, the agent in this struggle against the liberty of 
the individual ?—is not a crisis far more’ political than 
divine clearly to be seen? 

Were indeed these long centuries of strife indispens- 
able to the All-powerful God, who with one word called 
forth creation out of nothing, and light out of darkness ? 
We recognise the influence, action and aim, the slow and 
skillful efforts ot human diplomacy in conflict with mate- 
rial obstacles, in this struggle of opposing interests, 
We meet nowhere therein with those sudden and irresis- 
tible manifestations, by which the God of the Universe 
reveals His immutable truth to the sons of mortality. 

However this may be, the Church was gradually led 
to concentrate more and more all the power which she 
could wield, in order more forcibly to resist the attacks 
which imperilled her existence. The very powerful cen- 
tralisation of the Roman Empire served as her model 
and her support. The government of the Church was 
at first vested in various agents, and allowing freedom of 
action to the several Churches, was then transferred to 
local or Cécumenical Councils, and became ere long 
essentially monarchical and absolute. Towards the close 
of the sixth century the Papacy was definitively consti- 
tuted and assumed its comprehensive sovereignty, its 
dogmatic infallibility and its exclusive sway over all the 
clergy of the Universe. 

In this transformation was involved the last. phase of 
the religion of Christ. It had existed six hundred years 
amidst difficulties and dangers of all kinds, and this long 
period had been necessary to enable it to work out its 
ultimate formula and to establish its sate or the ruins 
of Roman society. 


THE DEICIDES. 335 


IV. 


WHERE then can we discover, amid the various incidents 
attending the progress of Christianity, the providential 
event of sufficient significance to enlighten the minds of 
the Jewish people, and to inspire them with an unques- 
tioning faith in the Christian Church and its founder; 
since the progressive development of the Christian idea, 
while aiming at the conquest of the universe, was aided 
by the ingenious contrivances of Paulinism, by the nat- 
ural dissolution of paganism, by the support of the em- 
perors, and by the vigorous and autocratic organisation 
of Catholicism ? 


The Jews, it is true, had perceived that great skill had 
been exercised in support of a cause which was also 
wonderfully promoted by outward and existing circum- 
stances; but in the events which consecutively occurred 
in the world they sought in vain for a direct display of 
divine intervention. They saw the leaders of the Chris- 
tian movement exercise marvellous ability in profiting 
by every occurrence which favoured the success of their 
work. They saw them make a compromise with philo- 
sophy in the element of the Trinitarian unity ; with poly- 
theism, in the matter of the incarnation of the Son of 
God; finally, they saw them concentrate all their energy 
on Rome, the centre of the political universe, and on 
Alexandria, the centre of the intellectual world, since 
their triumph in these two towns would manifestly ensure 
to them universal dominion. 


But they perceived at the same time that three hun- 
dred years of persecution, of martyrdom and of desperate 
conflicts had been necessary, notwithstanding these ma- 
nifestly propitious circumstances, to enable the Church 
to possess itself of the sceptre of the Roman world by 
means of the conversion of anemperor. Did not this 


236 THE DEICIDES. 


long struggle, marked by so many vicissitudes and so 
much’ suffering, offer an additional proof that the means 
Christianity had employed in her cause were wholly po- 
litical, wholly human. 


And what did the Jews observe further ? They observed 
the new faith persecuted, not only by public authority, 
whose existence it menaced, but also attacked and com- 
bated with extreme violence by its own adherents. They 
saw an internecine war of heresies and schisms break 
forth and divide the Church while the Czsars sacrificed 
to the cruel curiosity of the people, in the sanguinary 
games of the circus, hecatombs. of Christians, beneath 
the blades of gladiators and the teeth of wild beasts. 


Not until the age of Constantine did the Church, armed 
with an imperial decree which proclaimed the Christian 
religion established throughout the extent of the empire, 

‘invested with the right of calling together Gicumenical 

Councils, and endowed with ‘authority over all the reli- 
gious communities of the known world, assume the power 
and the title of CATHOLIC, that is to say, UNIVERSAL. 


But while we see this victorious Church issue from the 
catacombs to reign over all peoples, we also see it sub- 
jected to the human accidents of all contested authority. 
It exerts the power thus laboriously attained, to subdue 
its adversaries and to overthrow its antagonists; in its 
turn it became intolerant and oppressive; it declared that 
“all those who are not for. us are against us;” it over- 
whelmed by force, and if need be drowned in blood those 
heresies which, in its days of humiliation, it had opposed 
by persuasion and free discussion alone; it kindled the 
stake ; it armed legions to avenge its quarrel ; it organised 
the fearful and mysterious tribunal of the Inquisition 
and dived to the very depths of conscience, in order to 
scrutinise the orthodoxy of human thought ; it invested 
the Head of the Church, the heir of St. Peter, the ser- 
vant of the servitors of God, with unlimited power, with 


THE DEICIDES. 237 


absolute infallibility; not satisfied with creating him 
Sovereign Pontiff of the universe, it ancinted him king, 
and bestowed a temporal crown on the vicar of that 
Christ, who said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” 
It ruled sovereigns, and prescribed to them their poli- 
tics and their laws; it employed their arm to exter- 
minate those who disturbed and disquieted_ it—the Al- 
bigenses, the Hussites, the Protestants, the Calvinists ; 
it evoked St. Bartholomew’s Eve by the mouth of St. 
Dominic, encouraging the soldiers to massacre, ex- 
claiming, ‘“ Kill all, God will know how to distinguish 
His own.” Ina word, it followed the inevitable down- 
ward course of all unrestrained Governments, in tole-- 
rating no will, no idea, no principle which they con- 
sider opposed to their principles and their acts, and 
who deem themselves lost if they are discussed or 
controlled. 

While thus rapidly stating these facts, we desire not 
to maintain that they are devoid of all legitimate ex- 
cuse. Far from this; the Church attacked, threatened 
repeatedly by fresh adversaries, its vital principles en- 
dangered, yielded to a powerful and natural instinct 
of self-preservation, while seeking in self-defence all 
the means it possessed for the subjugation of its num- 
erous enemies. No human authority can, we think, 
be justly reproached for protecting itself, and for de- 
fending, even by force of arms, the system on which 
it ig hased. Only we ask permission to see in the ac- 
cessories, in the violence and in the vieissitudes of such 
a struggle, a course of events essentially human, and 
in no way providential. 

We perfectly comprehend that men, when excited by 
the violence of their passions and by feelings of self- 
interest, should indulge in these merciless conflicts; but 
we will never allow ourselves to associate the name of 
the God of justice and goodness with deeds of oppres- 
sion, vengeance, and blood. 


238 THE DEICIDES. 


SIXTH BOOK. 


Last objection—The Jews universally punished, in consc- 
quence of the condemnation of Jesus—Justice and mercy cf 
God—Judges and contemporaries of Jesus:Christ were not 
punished—Political and religious causes of the persecution 
ot the Jews, and of the hatred of which they have been the 
victims—Their material and moral position in relation to 
the Roman Empire—Their position in relation to Christian 
society—Results., 


I, 


ONE, and a final objection, remains to be investigated. 
We are thus addressed :— 

“Are not the misfortunes of the Jewish people, their 
dispersion among all nations, the contempt with which 
they are everywhere regarded, the reproach which uni- 
versally attends them, so many manifestations of the 
anger of an offended Deity? The Jewish people, like 
Cain, the murderer of Abel, bear the avenging mark on 
their brow; after eighteen centuries, the responsibility 
still rests upon them of having unjustly shed the blood 
of Christ. This secular expiation is the visible punish- 
ment of the Deicide which they committed. Everywhere 
popular clamour points to them, accuses and persecutes 
them. In this solemn manifestation of the outraged 
conscience, “VOX POPULI” is truly “VOX DEI.” 
What idea do those give us who speak thus, of Divine 
goodness and mercy? Does the Bible thus portray to us 
our Heavenly Father ever ready to pardon the guilty, 
abundant in mercy and compassion to the unfaithful. 
Unjust writers have accused the God of the Hebrews 


THE DEICIDES. 239 


of being a cruel master and terrible in His acts of ven- 
geance. Where then are these fearful instances to be 
found in the Scriptures, even at the moment of the 
outraged Lord’s most awful anger? The crimes, the 
revolts, and the backslidings of Israel were numerous, 
but God never showed Himself merciless. A prayer 
from Moses or the prophets, His love for His creatures 
and the chosen people soon disarmed and appeased His 
severity, and caused mercy to replace justice. Such is 
the sublime and paternal aspect under which the God of 
the Hebrews reveals Himself in the inspired books. 
“And the Lord passed before him proclaiming, The 
Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffer- 
ing and abundant in goodness and truth.’”* 

But to maintain and believe that the God who so re- 
peatedly declared to Moses himself that the children 
shall not be punished forthe sins of the fathers, the soul 
that sinneth shall be punished for its own sin alone, 
could cause the most distant posterity to expiate the 
faults of their ancestors; to impute such severity to the 
ever-merciful God, is this not to insult alike Divine 
Providence, reason, and truth ? 

Eighteen centuries have elapsed since the Romans, 
on the appeal of the guardians of Israel’s law, condemned 
the Apostle who, in a remote corner of Judea, was the 
promulgator of a new religious and political doctrine. 
Let us admit that both Romans and Jews were mista- - 
ken, and that they were incapable of either seeing or 
understanding that they were persecuting not only a 
social reformer but a god; let us admit that they volun- 
tarily closed their eyes to the light and acted wickedly 
against him, yet could he with one act of his omnipo- 
tence, have counteracted their schemes and rendered 
void their designs. 





. * Exodus xxxiv. 6, 


240 | THE DEICIDES. 


A singular fact is this! The actors in this drama were 
themselves not punished! The generation who con- 
demned and executed Jesus were visited by no chastise- 
ment. The magistrate’ of the Sanhedrin, the sacrilegi- 
ous judges, the people, witnesses and accomplices of the 
crucifixion, received no manifestation of the Divine an- 
ger. They died quietly in their beds, on the soil of their 
beloved country; they suffered neither the pains nor 
privations of exile.* Their children and the generation 
who succeeded them, whose hands were unstained by 
the blood of this saint or of this god, alone expiated the 
supposed crime. 

_ When Israel revolted at the very foot of Sinai against 
the living God, whose voice, from out the thunder and 
lightning they had just heard, in that most wondrous 
and solemn revelation ever vouchsafed to the race of 
man, the anger of the Lord was at once kindled against 
the rebellious people. That generation who could doubt 
the Divine promise and blaspheme against the Eternal, 

was irrevocably condemned. They were to perish in the 
desert, amidst toil, fatigue, conflicts and trials of all kinds; : 
but their sons who were guiltless of the crime of their 
fathers were not to endure the consequences of their 
fathers’ sin. They were to enter the promised land and 
to slake their thirst in the rivers of milk and honey, 

which were withheld from their fathers. . 

On the contrary, if we believe the accusers of Judaism 
when they treat of the condemnation of Christ, every 





* The reign of Claudius which immediately followed the 
epoch of the condemnation of Jesus, was for the Jews the hap- 
piest period of the Roman domination. He granted them many 
favours, he published two celebrated edicts which permitted 
them to live according to their law, secured to them all their 
privileges, enacted on their behalf the most complete liberty of 
conscience, and condemned and rescinded all the oppressive 
measures to which they had been subjected. 


A 


$ 


THE DEICIDES. 241 


feeling and principle of justice was subverted. The pro- 
pounders of the sentence of death, the really guilty, if 
there were any, were spared, and their sons who at the 
close of a century were torn from their country, dis- 
persed among all nations, reviled, persecuted and ex- 
posed to the contempt and the violence of all peoples, 
and these sons became the expiating victims of a crime 
which they did not commit! No! the condemnation of 
the Children of Israel for the hypothetical sin of their 
ancestors, the long persecution which would thus have 
rendered all the nations on the earth the instruments 
and fulfillers of the decrees of Providence, assuredly 
proceed not from that merciful and beneficent Deity, » 
who revealeth Himself to mortals ae His inexhaustible 
benefits alone. 

Alas, we but too often associate His sacred name with 
our weaknesses and our passions. We willingly consider 
Him as the participator in our hatred and fanaticism ; 
sometimes even we dare to justify our evil actions by 
pretending to commit them for the promotion of the 
glory of God. No! God is not responsible for those 
impious acts, for those sanguinary wars, for those reci- 
procal anathemas for which religion is the pretext. All 
these fratricidal conflicts are an abomination in the eyes 
of the Eternal. The Great, the Infinite, the All-powerful 
God needeth not our arms, our weapons, to avenge His 
outraged Majesty; He needeth not to transform the 
children of mortals into executioner$, to excite enmity 
between brethren, to sow discord among men, in order 
to punish those who violate His holy laws. 

Alas! we do not consider that thus to attribute to 
Him our brotherly hatred is to make God in our image, 
and to lower Him to the level of humanity. No; war 
comes not from God! no; fanaticism comes not from 
God! no; persecution comes not from God! From the 
beginning of time He hath permitted man, under the 
action of the free will with which He hath endowed him, 


242 THE DEICIDES. 


to bow to idols made of wood and stone, to manufacture 
deformed and monstrous images, to practise fearful rites, 
to sacrifice human beings with their children to horrible 
divinities ; He causeth not His lightnings to strike the 
races capable of such excesses; it sufficeth unto Him 
gradually toenlighten them, to afford them a distant view 
of the glorious truth, and to call them unto Himself by 
the power of reason, by the voice of conscience, and by 
the striking phenomena which surround them. And 
this God, so full of mercy and of toleration towards idola- 
tory so obstinate, He who grants each day equally to 
those who believe in Him, and to those who despise and 
blaspheme His Holy name, life, the warmth of the sun, 
daily bread, all the gifts and all the enjoyments of His 
magnificent universe—can this God have suddenly shown 
Himself to be actuated by eternal hatred towards His 
chosen people, His beloved servants, because they com- 
mitted a fault in not attributing a Divine nature to him 
who came to preach a law opposed to the imme code 
of Sinai! 

No! the will of God is foreign to the ‘violence of 
which Israel has so long been the victim. This persecu- 
tion has ever proceeded from causes wholy human ; it 
has resulted fromevents both political and religious, of 
which passion and blindness alone refuse to take ac- 
count, 


II. 


WE may state the political cause to be the following: 

We have above described the heroic struggle main- 
tained by Judea against Rome, the mistress of the world. 
This gigantic empire, to whose power all nations had 
succumbed, suddenly encountered a resistance to which 
it was not habituated: it sent its best army and its 
bravest captains in vain; Judea bending beneath its 
might, raised her head again and again from under the 


THE DEICIDES. 243 


yoke, and forced her conquerors to carry on a perpetual 
conflict. The Jews fought not for their country alone, 
they defended their religion, their worship, and their 
God; in other words, alike their own future and that of 
the whole world. They met the astonished Romans 
with a steadfastness, an energy, and indomitable resolu- 
tion which, during more than a century, kept the whole 
force of Imperial Rome in check. The anger of the 
Roman emperors and people was excited to its utmost 
degree, when they beheld a little people—the smallest 
of the peoples of the earth’—refuse to submit to the 
rulers of the universe. Tacitus has preserved for us the 
memory of this feeling of irritation in this passage, 
“What increased the rage of the Romans, said he, was 
to see that the Jews alone did not yield ;”—“Augebat 
tras quod sole Fudet non cessissent.”’* Thus, when Israel 
was at length vanquished, when Jerusalem became 
nought save a heap of ruins, a loud shout of joy re- 
sounded from one end of the Roman world tothe other, 
and Rome consecrated a triumphal arch to the Wewory 
of this great event. 

This was the principal cause of the hatred subsisting 
between the victors and the vanquished. The Czsars 
clearly comprehended that the Jews, even when in fetters, 
and torn from their country, would ever remain unsub- 
dued, and that with eyes and hearts turned ever towards 
Jerusalem, they would never cease to hatch plotsand to 
attempt insurrections, in order to reconquer and re- 
establish the sanctuary of the Eternal. The terrible 
revolt of Barkochebas did in fact, soon imperil the safety _ 
of the empire, while its existence was ever threatened 
by the distant, yet swelling torrent of barbarian hordes. 
Reasons of policy and anxiety for their own safety sug- 
gested to the Czsars the exercise ofexceptional severity 
against the unceasing agitation fomented by the Jews, 





* Tacitus, book v, chap. x. 


244 THE DEICIDES. 


who were constantly exposed to rigorous and violent 
measures of repression.. They were forbidden to visit 
the wailing-place of the ancient sanctuary; they were 
dispersed throughout the length and breadth of the 
empire ; they were subjected to the work and ignominy 
of slaves. Merciless laws were enacted, prohibiting 
them from reading the Bible and traditional writings. In 
-a word, all the energetic means were used to subdue these 
great, yet vanquished opponents, which menaced power 
ever adopts against those whom it deems its enemies. 
In truth, the Jews were enemies! If the Romans never 
pardoned them for their defence oftheir country and their 
endless rebellions, they in their turn, never pardoned 
the Romans for the destruction of the holy city, for the 
tyrannical severity to which they alone, among the numer- 
ous subjects of the empire, were subjected. Thus arose 
between thé victors and the vanquished an equal hatred, 
which increased in depth and bitterness day by day. 
And this hatred first felt by the government, was soon 
_ shared by the governed. The Roman people became ac- 
customed to consider the Jews as a dangerous and ac- 
cursed nation, one to be pursued, conquered and annihi- 
lated at any cost, because they were the irreconcilable 
enemies of the empire and of the human race. To be the 
adversary of the empire was in fact, virtually at this period, 
to be that ofthe whole world. Rome held in her hand 
the scepter of universal dominion; she was the head and 
the queen of all known peoples whom she dragged in 
chains linked to her triumphal car. Thus, whitherso- 
ever the exiles of Zion directed their faltering steps after 
their dark defeat, they found the Romans ever implac- 
able, the proconsuls ever stern, the generals still tremb- 
ling with indignation at the long repulse of the legions 
of Judea; everywhere in fact, they encountered a law of 
oppression, a spirit ofanger, vengeance, and persecution. 
Everywhere, in the north, and in the south, ‘“‘from the 
rising of the sun to the setting thereof,” in the deserts of 


THE DEICIDES. 245 


Africa, as in the rich districts of Asia, among the insula- 
ted Britons, as among the Scythians of the Euxine Sea, 
and amid the forests of Germany, as in the druidical fields 
of Gaul, everywhere did these mournful outcasts behold 
the eagles and the standard ranged against them, the 
pikes pointed, and the agents of Rome ready to pour out 


on them their menaces, their violence, and their stubborn 
anathemas. 


IIl.. 


From the commencement of the Roman domination, 
with other motives of persecution and political rigour, a 
religious element was associated. All the nations pre- 
viously: vanquished by the Romans were Pagans, hav- 
ing a nearly identical mythology, exercising the same 
worship, and holding the same belief and doctrines as 
their conquerors. In their struggle with the Jews, the 
Romans found themselves for the first time face to face 
with a resisting religion and a new principle. The Heb- 
rews in truth, defended far less their territory, than their 
faith ; for in it dwelt that which was of power to increase 
tenfold their courage and their strength. The Romans 
easily understood that religion was the secret of the hero- 
ism displayed by this strange people; therefore all there 
efforts were directed to the destruction of the worship 
and the Jaw of Israel. Statues were placed in the Tem- 
ple of Jerusalem, and attempts were made to substitute 
Roman idolatry for the worship of the Eternal. The 
sole effect of this sacrilege was to further stimulate the 
energies and despair of the defenders of Judea. 
Besides, it was not without astonishment and emotion 
that Rome contemplated a religion so unlike that fol- 
lowed by the whole world, one so simple, so contrary 
in principle to all the nations universally accepted as to 
the nature of the gods, and their relation to mortals, 


+ 13 


246 THE DEICIDES. 


They felt a secret presentiment that the “Unknown 
God,’”’ whom Israel adored, would one day annihilate 
the-divinities of Paganism, and would reign alone over 
that immense land on which they had trodden in tri- 
umph. What Greece had done in respect of Socrates, 
that other revealer of the One, Only and Infinite God, 
was enacted pitilessly by Rome in respect of the Jews. 
As Athens had pointed the sarcasms of Aristophanes at 
the illustrious philosopher, so did Rome point against 
the Jews the raillery, the derision, and the epigrams of 
her poets and writers. All the satirists of the empire 
exhausted their quivers, of shafts of ridicule and disdain, 
which they aimed at the Hebrews, whilst the most seri- 
ous historians, amongst them Tacitus himself, spread 
the most false notions among the people concerning the 
traditions and religious ptinciples of Israel. Did they 
not go so far as to declare that in the extreme end of 
the “Holy of Holies’” (that mysterious sanctuary in 
which, on the days of solemn convocation, the high 
priests pronounced the Ineffable Name), the head of an 
Ass was concealed from the gaze of the profane and was 
secretly worshipped ?* 

Besides, the Jews, in the estimation of the govern- 
ment and the people, were not only a sect whose doc- 
trines and religious faith were hidden and incomprehen- 
sible, but were also the despisers of the Pagan gods, the 
implacable adversaries of that material polytheism which 
then formed the belief of the whole of society, and the 
very basis of its organisation. The heathen priests, far 
more perspicacious than the Czsars, far more uneasy 
as to the danger incurred by their idolatrous theories 
from the promulgation of monotheism, excited anew the 
easily-moved masses against the Jews, while they at the 
same time counselled the emperors to the employment 
of excessive severities. Thus the difference of religion 





- * Tacitus, Narratives, book v, chap. 4, and following. 
¥ 


THE DEICIDES. 247 


dug ever deeper and deeper the abyss first opened by 
political causes between the Romans and the Hebrews. 

A fatal mistake augmented the reciprocal enmity in 
this respect. The members of the Christian sect bore, 
at its rise, no external and characteristic sign by which 
they could be distinguished from the Jews. The name 
of Jew was applied equally to the apostles of the Gospel 
and to the followers of the law of Moses: by it was un- 
derstood all natives of Judea, without defining whether 
they were converts to the new faith of Christ, or faithful 
adherents of the ancient ancestral law which the Chris- 
tian reformers had attempted to modify. We have above 
seen that Christianity in the Roman world was actuated 
by a spirit of proselytism that nothing could arrest. Its 
apostles and neophytes, while forming truly secret so- 
cieties amid the dark recesses of the catacombs, threat- 
ened the religious and political status then existing with 
a sudden dissolution. It is well known how the empe- 
rorsand Roman pontiffs met these revolutionary attempts 
which were nevertheless destined to triumph. They 
caused the adherents of the new religion to perish by 
thousands in the amphitheatres and catacombs. The 
blood of these innumerable martyrs flowed in torrents. 
The wild beasts of the circus, and that other yet more 
terrible wild beast called the populace, were let loose 
upon them while thirsting for murder andcarnage. But 
the Jews, confounded under the same designation with 
the Christians, were also confounded with them in the 
same sentence of death, were sacrificed in the same mas- 
sacres, were like them put to fearful torture, and were 
assailed by the blows of the gladiator, and by the teeth 
of infuriated beasts, and the persecutions which reached 
the apostles of Christ were extended with blind and in- 
discriminate fury to those whom the Christians accused | 
of being the murderers of their God. 


248 THE DEICIDES.: 


IV. 


HAVE we given a sufficiently clear statement in this ra- 
pid analysis of the essentially material causes which 
had excited the anger of the Pagan nations against the 
hapless remnant of Israel in imperial Rome? of the des- 
perate resistance of the Hebrew people, of their repeated 
revolts, of the danger to which, on several occasions, 
they exposed the empire; of the monotheistic doctrine 
which formed so singular a contrast amidst ancient po- 
lytheism, and in which was involved a still greater peril 
for the society of that day? Have we not proved that 
all these causes combined with the hatred entertained 
against and felt by, the first Christians were reasons suf- 
ficient to account for, according to the natural relation 
of events, the persecution, contempt, and outrages of 
which the Jews were the victims during the Roman do- 
mination? Let us further enquire whether their sad 
position in the now Christianised world may not be at- 
tributed to motives equally explicable and quite as hu- 
man, without its being necessary to believe in a super- 
natural chastisement, which would be to insult the justice 
and mercy of the living God. 


V. 


WHEN at length Christianity, on issuing from the cata- 
combs, seized the sceptre of the empire, and in the per- 
son of Constantine triumphantly ascended the throne of 
the Cesars, it found everywhere disseminated through- 
out all grades of society a hostile sentiment towards the 
Jews, that was already the growth of several centuries. 
_And they saw no necessity for repudiating, in this re- 
spect, the inheritance bequeathed them by pagan Rome. | 
In truth, had they desired so to do, perhaps the power 
would have failed them. Thus, the triumph of Chris- 


THE DEICIDE BS<: 249 


tianity was among heathen people alone; Christians 
were simply converted polytheists. The- grandeur of 
the Christian apostolate in fact consists in its having © 
won over all ancient mythology to the doctrine of the. 
Gospel, which doctrine, though deviating greatly from 
the law of Sinai, is nevertheless one of the branches, and 
an immediate offshoot of the sacred tree of which Juda- 
ism forms the vigorous trunk. - 
Christianity, in order to accomplish its mission and 
attain its end, accepted ancient society as it found it, 
with its priesthood, its various institutions, its prejudices 
and its weaknesses, It knew how to accommodate itself 
to the spirit of the times, in order to obtain possession 
of supreme power. In the same way in which, at a 
much later period, another ambitious man exclaimed, 
“Paris is well worth a mass,” primitive Christianity 
deemed that Rome, in other words, the domination of 
the then known world was worth a little concession. 
That which appeared in the name of universal liberty 
and fraternity, made a compromise with absolute power, 
and being content to reign side by side with the empe- 
rors, it left society devided as previously into masters 
and slaves, tyrants and helots, possessors of immense 
territories, and mendicants lacking bread. It reserved 
its marvellous design of social equality for the future 
world, and for the mysterious epoch of a life beyond the 
grave. That which first spoke in the name of evangeli- 
cal humility, thus saying, “My kingdom is not of this 
world,” made a compromise with the haughty pagan 
priesthood, organised anew pontificate, and transferred 
to the new church the forms, the titles, and the pomp of 
polytheistic worship. Finally, that which had appeared 
in the name of the one Only, Immaterial, and Infinite 
God, made a compromise with a plurality of gods. The 
trinitarian principle, while preserving the idea of a divine 
unity, modified it, and rendered it easier of acceptance 
to peoples long accustomed to a plurality of divinities» 


250 THE DEICIDES, 


half-mortal and half-divine, to the worship of images, 
and to a whole system of attractive, graceful, and highly 
artistic mythology. Thus, Christianity was in every re- 
specta skillful and successful compromise, and it may be 
truly affirmed that from Roman society it received as 
much as, perhaps more than it bestowed. 

We may cite among the passions and prejudices which 
Christianity found wholly developed and too deeply 
rooted to be dispelled, the universal antipathy felt by 
the Roman people towards the Jews. Thenew faith had 
no inducement to oppose, whether among the powerful 
classes, or among the lower classes, the hatred inspired 
by the proscribed race of Zion. It had, on the contrary, 
many inducements to encourage it. 


VI. 


ALL the chiefs of the new religion, all the priests of the 
new Church were themselves Romans. The first apostles 
who were proud of being Hebrews had long before past 
away. Not a single Jew was any longer to be found 
among the clergy of Christian Rome; all, born among 
the populations inimical to Israel, had imbibed from in- 
fancy the same feelings of contempt for the vanquished 
sons of Judea, and the new faith had in no way weak- 
ened this original animosity. With political motives, 
which were shared in this respect by all citizens of the 
empire, was combined a special and far more influential 
consideration. | 

The Jews were virtually a living, eternal and invincible 
protest against victorious Christianity. By the voice of 
all their doctrines, by that of all their declarations they 
said tothe religion of Christ, ‘‘ THOU ART A LIE.”’ While 
bending beneath the yoke amid all their sufferings, they 
ever exclaimed “There is but one God.” They re- 
proached the apostles and the votaries of the Gospel 
with having distorted the sense and the texts of the 


” THE DEICIDES. 251 


sacred writings, while pretending to deduce from them 
the truth of their Apostolate, the prediction and the re- 
velation of their Messiah. They declared that Jesus was 
but a man, a bold reformer. They designated the idea 
of making him a divinity as blasphemy. Finally they 
approved the sentence of death pronounced against this 
innovator who sought to overthrow the law revealed by 
the Eternal. Thus, on all these points, they presented 
a striking and obstinate denial of all the principles on 
which the Christian religion was based. 

Christianity had to struggle at the onset against power- 
ful heresies; but the opposition offered by the Jews was 
without doubt the most formidable, for it impugned the 
very essence of Christian doctrine. To overcome by 
persuasion the objections raised against the Christian 
doctrine in its earliest stages by the Jews, was soon 
found to be a useless attempt; for the Jews would not 
allow themselves to be either convinced or converted 
Faithful to their ancient law and pressing its venerable 
code to their hearts, they resisted amid all the threats 
of their persecutors, all attempts at proselytism, and 
passing on thus among all nations, they offered an eter- 
nal protest against triumphant Christianity. Thus, 
much was scarcely needed to embitter the Romans 
against the defenders of Judea, the disturbers of the 
empire. The Christianised members of the pagan society 
became savagely incensed against their old enemies; 
with political hostility was soon associated religious fa- 
naticism, and the Christian bishops, in order to consoli- 
date their own power, deemed it needless to calm popu- 
lar fury. The masses weré everywhere let loose upon 
the remnant of Israel. Those who had previously been 
considered dangerous conspirators, the revilers of the 
deities of Olympus were at this juncture indicated as 
“‘ Deicides,’’ who had put to death the revealer of the 
Gospel, the redeemer and liberator of the whole human 
race, 


252 THE DEICIDES. — 


Once launched on this course of cruelty and sinister 
retaliation, Roman society knew no bounds. At all 
points of the horizon, the chase of the Jews began, and 
the bloody dawn of the middle ages arose on the unfor- 
tunate martyrs of Jerusalem. A dark and sad period 
was this, when the aversion of the idolatrous Roman 
and of the converted pagan merging into one sentiment 
of passion and of hatred, left not a moment of truce, se- 
curity, or repose to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac 
and Jacob, to that race who, by means of the Decalogue 
and the Bible, had bestowed on the world light and 
truth. It was necessary to reach that epoch, the close 
of the eighteenth century, at which the principles of hu- 
man right once more triumphed amid the convulsions 
of a social revolution, ere the persecution was arrested 
at the call of outraged conscience. ere the supposed Dei- 
cides could regain their title and their right in civilised 
society as free human beings. But in this terrible period 
of the middle age, whose every day is marked by Israel 
as a funeral date, what calumny, what bloody sacrifices, 
what tortures and massacres have we not to record! 


VII. 


WHEN events have such significance, when fanaticism 
and persecution proceed so manifestly from popular pre- 
judice and sentiments of revenge, wherefore associate 
_ the name of the Almighty with these passions, and thus 
_ render Him an accomplice of the errors and crimes of 
man! When we view it under a simply human aspect, 
between victors and vanquished, between executioner 
and victim, we easily comprehend the tenacity of this 
blind hatred. History displavs to us instances of equally 
terrible and persistent detestation between hostile na- 
tions, who had not the same motives which actuated the 
destroyers of Jerusalem and the remnant of Judea,—the 
triumphant Gospe! and the oppressed Bible. Even in 


THE DEICIDES. 253 


our days we are surprised to see whole races of men 
persecute, oppose and destroy each other without mercy 
or intermission, from age to age. Not at the period 
only of the decline of the Roman empire has religious 
fanaticism excited fratricidal war and armed the mem- 
bers of the human family against each other. These 
sacrilegious conflicts may be explained, though not 
justified, as impelled by the depraved instincts which 
sometimes move the heart of man and the acts of na- 
tions. Even in our days the sinister cry, ‘death to 
the conquered!” has been the law and the rule of hu- 
man rights, and the most barbarous means have been 
employed to enforce this anti-social doctrine. The hour 
has at length struck when more generous principles 
are held sacred by peoples of modern times; but we 
must not-be surprised that for this, as in all things, 
ages have been required to overcome prejudices and 
error, and to establish truth. 


Of this anathema pronounced against the conquered, 
the sons of Israel have been victims ever since the 
days immediately following the destruction of the Holy 
City. Religious antagonism heightening the violence 
of this cruel law, the Jews have everywhere been con- 
sidered enemies of the State and of religion, have 
dragged their wandering and menaced existence from 
town to town, and from kingdom to kingdom, every- 
where despised, everywhere repulsed, everywhere de- 
tested. Thus was it that the masses, accustomed to 
' behold these persecuted beings ever living in bondage 
and shame, came at last to view them as sons forsaken 
by God, and to regard the condemnation of Christ as 
an explanation of the long and fearful misery by which 
they expiated the crime imputed to their ancestors. 
Thus, by this fatal chain of ideas and events, was the 
secular prejudice against the Jews originated and de- 
veloped. - Political motives and religious passions have 


254 THE DEICIDES. 


alone given rise to the inimical feelings which have 
been their portion throughout all ages and in all coun- 
tries. Surely it is forbidden to profane the majesty of 
God, by imputing to Him the crimes and cruelties 
committed by man, 


THE DEICIDES., | 255 


CONCLUSION. | 


iis 


LET us now cast a backward glance and measure the 
_road which we have traversed. The proposition we 
placed before us, while repudiating with justifiable in- 
dignation the accusation of ‘‘deicide” which, during eigh- 
teen centuries, has rested on the Jewish people, was this: 

“Ts it true that the Jews knew;; is it true that the Jews 
could have known that Jesus was the Son of God, and 
God Himself? If they did not know it, if no proof of 
his divinity was granted them, how could they have 
been guilty?” To this question’ the Gospel furnishes 
the reply. 

We have accepted the Christian dogma without dis- 
cussion, without criticism, without reservation. We 
have purposely abstained from censuring it, or calling it 
in question. Unlike the writers of the Voltairean school, 
we have not pointed out either the numerous contradic- 
' tions, or the flagrant errors which the four narratives 
contain; nor,asdo Strauss and the German school, have 
we attributed to these accounts a mythical character, by 
which the history of the son of Mary is placed in the 
category of fables and legends; neither have we, like 
Renan, divested his life of the supernatural incidents 
with which it abounds. Nor have we cast any doubt on 
the truth of the Christian doctrine, nor blamed Christi- 
anity for having accepted the divinity of Jesus. No; 
the matter we have had to consider is, according to our 


256 THE DEICIDES. 


view, far more important than these theological contro- 
versies. We had not to investigate what may be true 
or false in the doctrines of the Church; we desired only 
to defend an oppressed race, proscribed during nearly 
two thousand years, on the pretext that they had vo- 
luntarily put to death a God who had come to earth in 
order to offer Himself as a sacrifice for the salvation of 
mankind. 

("We have not even enquired whether it is credible that 
a God of infinite power, justice, and mercy could have 
needed, in order to save humanity, to invest Himself 
with a mortal form and to cause Himself to be killed by 
men, cruelly selected by Him to be the instruments of 
this sanguinary expiation, and to be sentenced by this 
fatal act, to universal execration. Setting aside these 
grave considerations, and accepting in its textual signi- 
fication the very book which has been made alike wit- 
ness and accuser in respect of the Jewish people, we 
have honestly consulted its pages, the sole record that 
remains to us of that memorable epoch. In them we 
have endeavoured to trace how, by what signs, by what 
words, Jesus revealed himself to the Jews; by what cha- 
racteristic traits the inhabitants of Judea, who were 
trembling with anxiety and hope for the advent of the 
Messiah, the son of David, could have recognised in him 
the messenger of the Eternal, the divine Word made 
flesh, and God made manifest under a human form. 

The entire life of the son of Mary has passed before 
our eyes, from the moment of his conception to that of 
his resurrection. The Gospel has proved to us that on 
no occasion did the people witness the miracles which 
were stated to have been performed, and by which alone, 
according to the circumstances of that time, a permanent 
and serious belief could have been generated in the minds 
of the masses, as in those of the heads, of the Hebrew 
people. On the contrary, we see that this God, while 
walking on the earth, shrouded himself ever in mystery 


THE DEICIDES. 257 


and darkness, fulfilled his most decisive revelations in the 
most profound secrecy, in the presence of only a few 
proselytes, urged on his disciples the most complete 
concealment, and obstinately refused to give to the Jews 
that proof of his divinity which they unceasingly be- 
sought him to grant. 

His miraculous birth took place in a solitary manger ; 
his heavenly call, at the moment when he received bap- 
tism at the hands of John the Baptist, was simply an in- 
dividual vision; the only witnesses of his transfiguration 
on Thabor were two disciples on whom he enjoined ab- 
solute silence; his resurrection was unseen by mortal 
eye, and his most fervent apostles required material 
proofs ere they gave it credence, which proofs no other 
voice in Israel was called on to verify. 

Was it possible that this clandestine divinity could be 
accepted by the Hebrews, when we see how often his 
most intimate disciples themselves doubt and protest 
against the declarations of Jesus? From the examina- 
tion of all the texts that we have: quoted, it appears to 
‘us that anyone who does not pronounce in favour of the 
Jewish people must be influenced by a most obstinate 
pre-possession. 

We think, besides, that we have proved on the strength 
of superabundant evidence that the miracles performed 
by the son of Mary, the sublimity of his moral predica- 
tion, the important reforms that he sought to introduce 
in the morals and manners of his time sufficed to cause 
him to be regarded as a great prophet, but were far 
from investing him with a divine character, or involv- 
ing the possibility of his sharing the power of the Al- 


mighty, according to the conceptions of the adorers of 
the absolute Unity. - 


Il, 


YEs, in the eyes of the contemporaneous Jews, Jesus of 
Nazareth was a new and glorious prophet; his words, his 


258 THE DEICIDES. 


_ ideas recalled and re-awakened in Israel the teachings 


and traditions of Isaiah and Ezekiel, imparting to them 
a higher significance and purer form. The people who 
had long been the dupes of numerous impostors auda- 
ciously usurping the sacred name of “ Nabi,” joyfully 
greeted in the son of Mary, a true seer, a profound mo- 
ralist and a thorough reformer; they evinced towards 
him the greatest respect, and ever received him with 
enthusiastic ovations, until the moment when, hearing 
him proclaim himself God and thus infringe one of the 
grandest principles of the Sinaic revelation, they im- 
mediately turned against him, and with one voice de- 
manded that the “‘blasphemer”’ should be put to death. 
And at this very day, after eighteen centuries of conflict, 
of war, persecution and martyrdom, herein is involved 
the sole point of contention between Israe] and the 
Christian world. Jesus, a. prophet instead of a God, 
would have been applauded and honored by the Jews, 
as he was in Judea when_he entered Jerusalem amidst 
the joyous cries of the eager multitude, when the magis- 
trates durst not adopt any severe measures against him,” 
for fear of wounding the quick sympathy of the people 
waiting anxiously to hear the words of the prophet of 
Nazareth. There is nothing in the Gospel which Juda- 
ism systematically rejects save the mysteries of the in- 
carnation, of the birth, and of the resurrection of Jesus— 
God; for, and we cannot too strongly insist on this 
point, the principles of love to your neighbour, of cha- 
rity and morality decreed by the founder of Christianity, 
belong wholly to the Bible and to Hebrew doctrines. 
Israel would deny her own belief and her traditions of 
ages, if she did not recognise in the discourses of the 
Nazarene reformer, the inspiration and the echo of that 


which has formed her steadfast faith ever since the Sinaic 
revelation, 


THE DEICIDES., 259 


Rae 


Ir will ever be an incomprehensible enigma for the 
Jewish people, that Jesus, or rather the predicted Mes- 
siah coming to us principally to free Israel, would not, 
or could not accomplish that deliverance, the specific 
object of his human mission. 

And did not the divine word declare that the son of 
David, the anointed of the Eternal should come to de- . 
liver the Jewish people and cause the torch of Zion to 
illuminate the world? And what effect did the advent 
of Jesus produce, save to plunge Israel-into new disas- 
ters and into deeper and more cruel degradation. The 
Jews, it is true, are reproached with having drawn down 
these calamities on their own heads by their incredulity 
and condemnation of Jesus. But the divine prophecies 
nowhere refer to these doubts, or to this resistance ; nay 
declare that on the day of Messiah’s advent, Israel will 
be free from the yoke of the stranger and from pagan 
error; the nations will bow to the yoke of David and 
_ will adore the One Only God, to the extremities of the 
earth. 

We would ask every amide mind whether it is possible 
that the Jews could see in the words of Jesus, in the acts 
of his life and in. the events occurring subsequently to 
his death, the accomplishment of those solemn promises 
which were their hope. and their support? That people, 
who were to be saved by the advent of the Messiah, were 
overwhelmed by new disasters. Torn from the land of 
their birth, massacred by the Roman armies, they. be- 
held the Temple of the living God overthrown and re- 
duced to a heap of ruins, and the holy city destroyed 
which was to have been the centre and the queen of the 
whole world, the “house ®f prayer for all nations.” 
They were dragged into exile and slavery, and delivered 
over to the most fearful torments ; they became the butt 
of all outrages, of all hatred, of all calumnies that politi- 


260 THE DEICIDES. 


cal and religious fanaticism could invent. He who was 
the chosen of God, the favoured son of the Eternal, was 
thenceforth the accursed, the disinherited, the pariah 
among his fellow men, and day by day his sufferings ac- 
cumulated on his head. No more repose, no more par- 
don, no more happiness! And he was to recognise a 
divine work, the hand of a saving Messiah in the misery 
that crushed him! No! he remained with reason assured 
that he was the victim of all that was most iniquitous in 
human passion; and in his sorrow, he held fast to the 
hope that the solemn day of redress would arrive. 

Did not the general condition of society also prevent 
the recognition of Jesus as the Son of God, as the Mes- 
siah? According to all the promises of prophecy, the 
advent of the Redeemer was to inaugurate for the whole 
world, an era of peace and universal toleration ; whereas, 
after the promulgation of Christianity, after it had ob- 
tained universal dominion, the earth seemed more than 
ever delivered over to war, to controversy, and to all the 
excesses of fanaticism. A conflict among all principles 
and all doctrines, among all peoples and kings; a con- 
flict among religious sects; intolerance and persecution 
raging on every step of the social ladder; bloody revo- 
lutions ; incessant and terrible convulsions; the name of 
the Eternal God associated with all deeds of blood and 
invoked to justify the most fearful cruelties ; entire peo- 
ples, numerous races of men exterminated in the name 
of religion; in one word, discord brandishing his burn- 
ing torch amid the world of man: such is the picture 
that human society has presented during the last eigh- 
teen centuries. 

Once more then, we ask, was it possible that in the 
midst of this moral anarchy, of these unrestrained pas- 
sions, Israel, the prey of the most fearful trials, wander- 
ing and dispersed in the midst of nations, proscribed and 
execrated in all times, under ail reigns, in all countries 
and in all regions of heaven, could believe in the divinity 


THE DEICIDES. 261 


of a religion in whose name such fearful crimes were 
enacted, could believe in the actuality of the advent of 
that era of universal justice and happiness which had 
been proclaimed to him as the revealing sign of the 
coming of the Messiah? 


IV. 


But the sufferings of the Jewish people, it is affirmed,: 
are the expiation for their crime: they closed their eyes 
to the light, they killed a God, they rejected the salva- 
tion that was offered them, and during eighteen hundred 
years they have endured chastisement for this sin. 

Did they indeed close their eyes to the light, they who 
were awaiting with such feverish anxiety the coming of 
the liberator predicted? Was it not rather thenceforth 
evident, does not all that previously happened irrefut- 
ably prove that this liberator would not, or could not 
reveal himself to the Jews, and that they were systemati- 
cally left in ignorance of all that could enlighten them 
as to the person, the nature, and the real mission of the 
incarnate God, of Christ the Saviour? oy 

And according to the original and traditional design of 
the Christian Church, it was necessary that it should be 
thus. . What, in fact, formed the essence and caused the 
grandeur and success of Christianity among pagan na- 
tions is, that God Himself, the Infinite, the Eternal, came 
down to suffer on earth in order to redeem sinful human- 
itv. If we were to discard the passion and the death of 
the Divine Being in his human form, Christianity would 
be without foundation, without aim, without result. We 
will not now inquire into all that this doctrine involves 
which is mysterious and inexplicable to human reason. 
‘We will only ascertain that according to the Christian 
system, the salvation of the human race could be secured 
by the voluntary sacrifice only of a God, who presented 
himself as an offering for the salvation of mankind. For 


262 THE DEICIDES. 


those who hold this faith, this is a grand thought, a mag- 
nificent hope. But what would result therefrom? That 
if the Jews, who were unfortunately chosen to. be the 
instruments of this work ofexpiation, had not pronounced 
the condemnation of Jesus, the divine aim would have 
been unfulfilled, sinful humanity would have continued 
to be the prey of the spirit of evil, and Christianity would 
have been stifled at its birth, And what more may be 
deduced? That Jesus, dwelling peacefully in Judea, 
tolerated by the agents of public authority, admired by 
the people, was simply an additional member of the ranks 
of the prophets of Israel, but was not the initiator of a 
new religion, or of the immense proselytising movement 
which finally pervaded and ruled the Roman empire. 
Had the apostles not been repulsed by the faithful ad- 
herents of Judaism, they would not have carried the 
Gospel to the Gentiles, and long centuries would have 
elapsed before the Bible reached heathen populations, 
even with the aid of the rash commentaries of the early 
Christians. Considered in this light, the resentment of 
the Christians against the Jews is not only injustice, but 
also ingratitude. | 
Yes! ingratitude, for by means of these Jews, the 
blind and passive agents of the great designs of God, 
was Christianity founded, has been developed and has 
triumphed throughout the world. The cross, which was 
the instrument of torture, has become the symbol of the 
Christian victory, and of universal redemption! and the 
Calvary on which the God suffered death has shone like 
a lighted beacon in the darkness of Paganism. Instead 
of persecuting and execrating the Jews, Christians ought 
to have blessed them; for without the providential and 
predestined execution of Jesus, what would have been 
the fate of Christianity ? What would have become of 
the Gospel, and of the new doctrine? Where would be 
this whole Christian world, with its splendour, its hier- 
archy, its pontiffs, its saints, and all the gorgeous pomp 


THE DEICIDES. 263 


by which, for the last eighteen hundred years, it has 
held in subjection nearly all the peoples of the earth ? 


V. 


TuHUus the historical development of Christianity, far 
from overcoming and dispelling, naturally tended to 
strengthen the incredulity of the Jewish people. Do we, 
however, affirm that Judaism obstinately closes its eyes 
to the grandeur of Christian civilisation, and the progress 
it has operated in the world? Far from this. While not 
adoring a God in Jesus, while unable to see in Christi- 
anity the realisation of the divine predictions, Judaism, 
nevertheless, recognises in it, according to the provi- 
dential order of events, one of the grandest epochs of 
humanity, a gigantic step made towards the goal which 
Judaism itself seeks to reach. Let us enter upon the 
definition of this thought as the conclusion of the im- 
portant study to which we have here applied ourselves. 


VI. 


THE moral and religious condition of the whole world, 
at the time when the Christian doctrine was enunciated 
by its founder, may be described thus: Polytheism held 
universal sway; it had on its side material force com- 
bined with the acceptance of the masses; it was also 
upheld by the prestige and attractiveness of a sensual 
and graceful system of mythology, which was indulgent 
towards all human weaknesses, and which, instead of 
idealising its divine creations, invested them with all the 
passions of the frail inhabitants of the earth. The wor- 
ship of a spiritual God, the dogma of a divine Unity were 
preserved only in a remote corner of Judea, by a people 
(the smallest of all the peoples of the earth), whom the 
singularity of its religion, the jealous care with which it 


et ane 


- 


264, THE DEICIDES. 


guarded the sacred depot of its belief, and the contempt 
which it displayed for strange idols rendered hateful to 
Pagan society. 

The Jews, manifestly powerless to resist the immense 
majority of the idolatrous races and having been van- 
quished in several unequal conflicts, had wholly secluded 
themselves and concealed the treasure of their faith at 
Jerusalem, in order to preserve it from all profane con- 
tact and admixture. They had placed a hedge round the 
divine law, separating it with stern solicitude from the 
religious and social laws of the surrounding nations. 

They thus devoted themselves to defending it from all 
outward attack; but it was impossible for them to con- 
ceive either the idea or the hope of thrusting it on the, 
world. It sufficed to them to protect the sacred torch 
kindled on the burning summit of Mount Sinai from the 
breath of contrary winds. The time had long passed 
when the prophets transmitted to Pagan nations the 
words and decrees of the Eternal, when Jonas commanded 
the Ninevahites to repent, when Isaiah, Ezekiel, and 
Jeremiah menaced Egypt, Edom, Tyre, Babylon, and 
Assyria. Judea found it too difficult to defend her Uni- 
tarian belief, for her to aspire to the empire of the world. 
She was content to live faithful only to the purity of her 
traditions. But the time was come when this individual 
life was about to be rendered impossible. The Czsars, 
conquerors of all known nations could not permit that 
Judea alone, with its narrow territory and its small num- 
ber of inhabitants, should escape their domination. Ro- 
man polytheism and Jewish monotheism would inevit- 
ably range themselves in order of battle for a savage 
conflict. Fora long time previously the historians, phi- 
losophers, and moralists of Rome and Greece had cast 
inquisitive and inimical glances at this strange Judaism, 
of which the dogmas and principles presented so strik- 
ing a contrast to those of the whole world. They ridi- 
culed the God they could not understand, they insulted 


THE DEICIDES. 265 


this hidden God, whom nothing material had revealed 
to mortal sight; they hated this people, so different € 
manners and language, from all the other political fami- 
lies of theearth. They were always disposed to calumni- 
ate and to imprecate a religion, the absolute spiritual- 
ism of which was the condemnation of their materialistic 
dogmas. Philo at Alexandria, and Josephus at Jerusa- 
lem and at Rome had courageously and devotedly de- 
fended the Jewish doctrine, already attacked, misrepre- 
sented and persecuted by contemporary fanaticis::: and 
prejudice. But their efforts had been powerless to avert 
the hour of final struggle; everything indicated the ap- 
proach of a terrible conflict between Rome and Jerusa- 
lem, between polytheism and monotheism. 

Thus paganism, having on its side the gigantic power 
of invincible armies of the Roman empire, was sure to 
triumph easily over a little people, already enfeebled and 
disorganised by the captivity of a number of its sons and 
by fearful disasters, and having delivered from their ear- 
lier captivity but a small portion of their tribes. 

Yes! the Mosaic idea incurred the risk of being over- 
thrown and annihilated, notwithstanding the heroism of 
its champions, in this struggle between a handful of men 
and Rome, the mistress of the world. And if polytheism 
had then triumphed, that divine truth might have been 
for ever quenched which Israel had so faithfully guarded, 
_ from the days of Abraham and Moses, at the price of so 
much suffering and sacrifice, in order totransmit it, at the 
destined moment, to all his brothers of the human race. 

That epoch had not yet come. The God of the Spirits 
of all flesh, the One, Only and Infinite God, the invisible 
and immaterial God could not thus have been presented, 
without compromise and in all His glory, to races of ido- 
laters. For they could not have comprehended Him. 
Too much accustomed to humanise the Divinity, it was 
impossible that their mental vision could be elevated to 
so lofty a conception as the doctrine of the Unity. 


266 THE DEICIDES. 


VII. 


THE Eternal God then employed some of the provi- 
dential means by which, with the mystery of His infinite 
wisdom, He solves difficulties with marvellous singleness 
of design that every human effort would be powerless to 
unravel. 

Between Judaism and the pagan world thus placed in 
fatal contact and destined to oppose each other in mor- 
tal strife, God caused Christianity to arise, a point of 
meeting between Jewish monotheism and Roman «oly- 
theism; a wonderful compromise by which the Jewish 
dogma was introduced into, and subjugated the world, 
but clothed in a new form adapted to the ideas and social 
genius of the epoch. 

By these means, an extraordinary phenomenon was 
produced, a manifest revelation of the divine power ever 
acting on the course of events here below. Judaism, 
while politically overpowered and having its nationality 
destroyed by the irresistible force of the Roman empire, 
nevertheless held sway over its conquerors in the spirit- 
ual and moral world. While awaiting the moment when 
she should win it over to the doctrine of the Divine 
Unity, Judaism bestowed on it a God in the person of 
one of her most remarkable prophets and illustrious 
sages. Thus it happened, that while Rome believed it 
had triumphed at Jerusalem and buried the Divine law 
beneath the ruins of the Temple, Jerusalem, on the con- 
trary, rose gloriously from her sepulchre, speedily over- 
threw the old world, and by means of the Bible and the 
Gospel, founded a new civilisation on the ruins of Pag- 
anism. 

But amid the materialistic social conditions of that 
period, this triumph of the vanquished over the victors 
could be secured by means only of aclever combination, 
which pure Judaism could not have accepted without for 


THE DEICIDES. 267 


ever sacrificing her fundamental principles, but which 
rising Christianity could on the contrary adopt without 
danger. This then in fact, was what this new form of 
Judaism, popularised by the disciples of Jesus, yielded to 
Pagan society in exchange for universal dominion. 

It admitted in common with Pagan mythology, an- 
thropomorphism, that is the possible incarnation of God 
in the human form, a doctrine that Judaism repudiated 
with unqualified repugnance. It skilfully combined the 
belief in the plurality of gods with the Unitarian doc- 
trine, by the declaration of the Trinity, an ingenious 
theory which, while recognising three distinct persons 
in God, blends them into a mysterious and inscrutable 
unity. Christianity, whilst expelling its immoral and 
sensual divinities from ancient Olympus, peopled the 
heavens with Saints, whose intercession was allpowerful 
with the Heavenly Father and His divine Son, and who 
in the eyes of the Pagan world presented a spiritualised 
image of the ancient demi-gods. The angels themselves, 
according to the traditions of the Bible the glorious mes- 
sengers of the Eternal, now assumed the forms and the 
faces of those roguish cupids who surrounded the thrones 
of the immortal gods. Polytheism thus transformed, 
could in some sort recognise and worship one of its most 
graceful divinities in the mother of Christ, in the imma- 
culate virgin, a type of beauty and love exalted to their 
highest moral ideal. Even the three Graces were not 
devoid of a symbol in the charming and mystic group of 
the three divine Virtues. In consequence of these con- 
cessions, Christianity found acceptance with heathen 
nations who would assuredly have rejected the Jewish 
religion on account of its unconditional spirituality. 

A well-known Apologue relates that Truth, rising one 
day naked. from ‘her well, alarmed and put to flight all 
who beheld her, while Fable, richly attired, an object of 
the adoration and homage of mortals, passed along the 
same path on which she overtook poor Truth, shiver- 


268 THE DEICIDES. 


ing with cold, petrified and forsaken. She took com- 
passion on her, covered her with her radiant mantle, 
adorned her with jewels and brilliants, and introduced 
her, attired in these splendid garments, to a surprised 
and delighted world. | 

Thus Christianity borrowed from the pagan formula 
those rich ornaments which had rendered them beauti- 
ful and attractive in the eyes of ancient civilisation, in 
order to disseminate among idolatrous nations the truths 
of the laws of God. It consented to modify the primitive 
and severe form of the law of Sinai, but it preserved the 
leading idea. Its specific work was to spiritualise, by 
means of mystic symbolism, the dogma of Paganism, 
while vivifying them with the breath of the Unity-of 
God a pure spirit and marking them with the indelible 
impress of Jewish theogony. The Christian Trinity, while 
involving a compromise with Polytheism, is none the 
less an energetic affirmation on the Jewish Unity. Un- 
der the shelter of this mysterious doctrine, the Bible, 
the Book of Books, the Decalogue, the law of God have 
permeated the whole world according to the letter, ac- 
cording to the spirit, and according to their primitive 
purity, gradually lighting up the darkness pervading 
idolatrous worship, conveying to man the idea and the 
consciousness of eternal truths, and by means of the 
progress of thought and of morals, gradually conducting 
him to the knowlegde of that great unitarian principle 
which Roman society was incapable of comprehending. 

This is what Christianity has done; this is the manner 
in which it saved the faith of Israel from the inevitable 
‘destruction with which it was menaced by victorious 
Polytheism ; this is the truly providential work which it 
has accomplished and is accomplishing here below. 
And can it then be supposed that Judaism is the enemy 
of Christianity? No! No! Thoughencountering wicked . 
passions and pitiless executioners in Christian society ; 
though persecuted by the erring sons who, issuing from 


: THE DEICIDES. 269 


its midst, forgot that they were its promulgators in the 
world, it has never confounded the misdeeds of men 
with the work itself of which. Christianity is the agent. 

Judaism knows, clearly perceives that Christianity is 
a bridge thrown across the abyss which separates it from 
other peoples; and throughout ages she has seen that 
all those great inteilects which direct universal progress 
pass along this divine bridge in order to reach her; that 
all profound thinkers meditating on eternal truth, walk 
daily by the light of the Bible and thus cause all modern 
society to walk with them towards the belief in the Unity 
of God, and the Unity of the human race. 

No! Judaism does not curse Christianity; she honors 
in it the. revelation of the great moral principles, of the 
sublime virtues which regenerated the ancient world and 
wresting it from the worship of matter and the errors of 
idolatry, initiated it in the religion of the spirit and in 
the duties which the Sinaic revelation proclaimed. In it 
she admires one of the most glorious epochs of human- 
ity, a providential revolution which opened to man a 
new source of sentiments, of ideas, of progress in all 
channels of human intellect, in all aspirations of the 
human soul, But she especially appreciates it as a 
powerful mediator between Israel and the human race; 
as an indefatigable pioneer who prepares, in the deserts 
of paganism, the way of the Eternal ; asa missionary who 
disseminates the word and the book of Truth to the ex- 
tremities of the earth; as a sower who casts into the 
fertile soil beneath the four corners of the horizon, the 


mysterious seed of which Judaism is destined to be the 
reaper. | 


FINIS, 


14 


Ate N. DT Xx. 





See Note 1, Page 50. 





GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN, VIII. 


12 { Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, 1 am the 
light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in 
darkness, but shall have the light of life. 

13 The Pharisees therefore said unto him, Thou bearest 
record of thyself; thy record is not true. 

14 Jesus answered and said unto them, Though I bear record 
of myself, ye¢ my record is true; for I know whence I came, 
and whither I go ; but ye cannot tell whence I come, and whither 
I go. 

15 Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man. 

16 And yet if I judge, my judgment is true; for I am not 
alone, but I and the Father that sent me. 

17 It is also written in your law, that the testimony of two 
men is true. 

18 I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that 
sent me beareth witness of me. 

1g Then said they.unto him, Where is thy Father? Jesus 
answered, Ye neither know me, nor my Father: if ye had known 
me, ye should have known my Father also. 

20 These words spake Jesus in the treasury, as he taught in 
the temple: and no man laid hands on him; for his hour was 
not yet come. 

21 Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye 
shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go,-ye can- 
not come. 


APPENDIX. 271 


22 Then said the Jews, Will he kill himself? because he ch 
Whither I go, ye cannot come. 

23 And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath ; I am from 

above: ye are of this world ; I am not of this world. 
_ 24 I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: 
or if ye believe not that Iam fe, ye shall die in your sins. 

25 Then said they unto him, Who art thou? A.1d Jesus saith 
unto them, Even ¢he same that I said unto you from the be- 
ginning. 

26 I have many things to say and to judge of you: but he that 
sent me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I 
have heard of him. 

27 They understood not that he spake to them of the Father. 

28 Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the 
Son of man, then shall ye know that I am Ze, and ¢hat I do noth- 
ing of myself; but as my father hath taught me, I speak these 
things. 

29 And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left 
me alone; for I do always those things that please him. 

30 As he spake these words many believed on him. 

31 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If 
ye continue in my word, ¢hen are ye my disciples indeed. 

32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make 
you free. 

33 They answered him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were 
never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be 
made free? 

34 Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Who- 
soever committeth sin is the servant of sin. 

35 And the servant abideth not in the house forever: du¢the 
Son abideth ever. 

36 If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free 
indeed. 

37 I know that ye are Abraham’s seed ; but ye seek to kill 
me, because my word hath no place in you. 

38 I speak that which I have seen with my Father ; and yedo 
that which ye have seen with your father. 

39 They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. 
Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would 
do the works of Abraham. 


272 APPENDIX. 


40 But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the 
truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Arbaham. 

41 Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, 
We be not born of fornication ; we have one father evex God. 

42 Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would 
love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither 
came I of myself, but he sent me. 

43 Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye 
cannot hear my word. 

44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father 
ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode 
not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he 
speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the 
father of it. 

45 And because I tell you the truth ye believe me not. 

46 Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, 
why do ye not believe me? ; 

47 He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear 
them not, because ye are not of God. 

48 Then answered the Jews, and said unto him, Say we not 
well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil ? 

49 Jesus answered, I have not a devil; but I honour my 
Father, and ye do dishonour me. 

50 And I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh 
and judgeth. , 

51 Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my Saying, 
he shall never see death. 

52 Then said the Jews unto him, Now we know that thou hast 
a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets ; and thou sayest, 
Ifa man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death. 

53 Art thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead? 
and the prophets are dead: whom makest thou thyself? 

54 Jesus answered, If [honour myself, mv honour is nothing: 
it is my Father that honoureth me; of whom ye say, that he is 
your God: 

55 Yet ye have not known him; but I know him: and if I 
should say, I know him not, I shall be a liar like unto you: 
but I know him, and keep his saying. 

56 Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day ; and he saw 
i¢, and was giad, 


APPENDIX. 273 


.57 Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years 
old, and hast thou seen Abraham ? 

58. Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Be- 
fore Abraham was, I am. 

59 Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid 
himself, and went out of the Temple, going through the midst 
of them and so passed by. 





See Page 72. 





ST.JOHN, V. 


tg 4 Then answered Jesusand said unto them, Verily, verily, 
I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he 
seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these 
also doeth the Son likewise. 

20 For the the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all 
things that himself doeth: and he will show him greater works 
than these, that ye may marvel. 

2t For as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth 
them ; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. 

22 For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all 
judgment unto the Son ; 

23 That all ze should honour the Son, even as they honour 
the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the 
Father which hath sent him. 

24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, 
and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and 
shall not come into condemnation ; but is passed from death 
unto life. 

25 Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and 
now is, when tlre dead shali hear the voice of the Son of God: 
and they that hear shall live. 

26 For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to 
the Son to have life in himself ; 

27 And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, 
because he is the Son of Man, 


274 APPENDIX. 


28 Marvel not at this; for the hour is coming, in the which 
_ all that are in the graves shall hear his voice. 

29 And shall come forth ; they that have done good, unto the 
resurrection of life ; and they that have done evil, unto the re- 
surrection of damnation. 

30 I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and 
my judgment is just ; because I seek not mine own will but the 
will of the Father which hath sent me. 

31 If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. 

32 There is another that beareth witness of me; and I know 
that the witness which he witnesseth of me is true. 

33 Ye sent unto John, and he bear witness unto the truth. 

34 But I receive not testimony from man: but these things I 
say, that ye might be saved. 

35 He was a burning and a shining light: and ye were. Bids 
ing for a season to rejoice in his light. 

36 But Ihave greater witness than /hat of John: for the works 
which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that 
I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me. 

37 And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne 
witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, 
nor seen his shape. 


38 And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he 
hath sent, him ye believe not. 

39 Search the Scriptures ; for in them ye think ye have eternal 
life: and they are they which testify of me. 

40 And ye will not come to me, that ye might have wan 

41 I receive not honour from men. 

42 But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you. 

43 Iam come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not}; 
if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. 

44 How. can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, 
and seek not the honour that cometh from God only? 

45 Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there 
is one that accuseth you, evex Moses, in whom ye trust. 

46 For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: 
for he wrote of me. 


47 But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my 
words. 





APPENDIX. 275 


ST. JOHN, VI. 


28 Then said they unto him, What shall we fats that we might 
work the works of God? 

29 Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of 
God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent. 

30 They said therefore unto him, What sign showest thou 
then, that we may see, and believe thee? what dost thou work? 

31 Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, 
He gave them bread from heaven to eat. 

32 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father 
giveth you the true bread from heaven. 

33 For the bread of God is he which cometh down from 
heaven, and giveth life unto the world. 

34 Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this 
bread. 

35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that 
cometh to me shall never hunger ; and he that believeth on me 
shall never thirst. 

36 But I said unto you, That ye have also seen me, and be- 
lieve not. 

37 All that the Father giveth me shall come to me: and him 
that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. 

38 For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, 
but the will of him that sent me. 

39 And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of 
all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should 
raise it up again at the last day. 

40 And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one 
which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlast- 
ing life: and I will raise him up at the last day. 

41 The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, I am 
the bread which came down from hheaven. 

42 And they said, Is not this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose 
father and mother we know? how is it mee that he saith, Fc came 
down from heaven? 

43 Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, Murmur 
not among yourselves. 


276 APPENDIX. 


44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath 
sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. _ 

45 It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught 
of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned 
of the Father, cometh unto me. . 

46 Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is 
of God, he hath seen the Father. 

47 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me 
hath everlasting life. 

48 I am that bread of life. 

49 Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are 
dead. 

50 This is the bread that cometh down from heaven, that a 
man may eat thereof and not die. 

51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if 
any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever¢ and the bread 
that I will give is my flesh, which [ will give for the life of the 
world. 

52 The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How 
can this man give us Ais flesh to eat? 

53 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, veriiy, [ say unco you, 
Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, 
ye have no life in you. | 

54 Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eter- 
nal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. 

55 For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink in- 
deed. 

56 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth 
in me, and I in him. 

57 As the living Father sent me, and I live by the Father; so 
he that eateth me even he shall live by me. 

58 This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as 
your fathers did eat manna and are dead: he that eateth of this 
bread shall live for ever. 

59 These things said he in the Synagogue, as he taught in 
Capernaum. 

60 Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard, ¢/zs, 
said, This is an hard saying: who can hear it? 

61 When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured 
at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you? 


APPENDIX. 277 


62 What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where 
he was before? 

63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth noth- 
ing: the words that I speak unto you, ¢Aey are spirit, and they 
are life. 

64 But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus 
knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and 
who should betray him. 

65 And he said, Therefore said § unto you, that no man can 
come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father. 

66 From that “me many of his disciples went back, and 
walked no more with him. 

67 Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? 

68 Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we 
go? thou hast the words of eternal life. 

69 And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the 
Son of the living God. ! 

70 Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and 
one of you is a devil ? 

71 He spake of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon: for he it was 
that should betray him, being one of the twelve, 


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TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


ans 
ooo 


INTRODUCTION. 





PAGE 

Cn, I.—Strauss and Renan—Crisis in all Religious Dog- 
ma—Spirit of Toleration and Conciliation—Rationalism 
and Dogmatism—Aim of this Work—Reply to various 
Objections—Intemperate Criticisms—Authenticity of the 
Gospels—The Pharisees and the Miracles considered 
from the standpoint of the Divinity of Jesus : i 

Cu. II.—Causes of the Incredulity of the Jews as to the 
Divinity and the Messianic Mission of Jesus—The two 
Messianic Missions—Universal Aspirations of Judaism 
—The God of the Hebrews—Jewish Philosophy—The 
Immortality of the Soul—The Kingdom of God—The 
Spiritual and the Temporal—Providence and Liberty— 
The Unity of the Human Race—Brotherhood and Neigh- 
bourly Love—Influence of Jewish Ideas on Social Pro- 
gress——Their Future 40 a So ke eee 





2a & 
ali 


PART THE FIRST. 


Book I.—State of Judea at the time of the birth of Jesus— 
Struggle against the Romans—Desire and hope for a De- 
liverer—Signs by which this Deliverer was to be recog- 
nised—Analysis of the Prophecies respecting the Mes- 
senger, and the Messianic Age . ; I 

Book II.—John the Baptist—Was he the Predicted ose: 
runner ?—His Replies to his questioners—His doubts as 
to the mission of Jesus—Scene of the Transfiguration— 
Miraculous conception of Jesus—The Annunciationa— 
Joseph’s dream—The people’s ignorance—Birth of Jesus 
—Accompanying Miracle—The Magi—Massacre of the 
Innocents—Good Faith of the Jews—Jesus was not the 
son of David—Jesusand Emanuel . . . «© J 


280 CONTENTS. 
: PAGE 
Boox III.—Childhood of Jesus—His brothers and sisters 
—Family life—The child Jesus at Jerusalem—Baptism of 
Jesus—Miracles of the time of Moses—First sermons of 
Jesus—The admiration that he excited—His respect for 
the law of Moses—His departure from Nazareth—The 
miracles of Jesus—Miracles in respect of faith and of 
science—Authority of miracles in Hebrew dogma—Le- 
gend of Rabbi sheets ami ers and Seneebegier 
Jesus as prophet... ee 
Book IV.—Uncertainty of dotioas held in Jaden with re- 
spect to Jesus—lIrresolution of his disciples—Incredul- 
ity of his family—Disposition of the magistrates—The 
attacks made by Jesus on public authority—Liberty of 
speech in Israel—Political danger of the serm>ns of Je- 
sus—His ordinary retinue—Moderation of the Jewish 
authorities—The partisans of Jesus desire to proclaim 
him King—Benevolence of the Pharisees— Political situ- 
ation of Judea ; ‘ 42 
Book V.—Uncertainty of piiniak as to the messianic aha. 
acter of Jesus—He reveals himself to his apostles—He 
forbids their saying aught about him to the Jews—Mo- 
tives for this prohibition—Doubts as to the descent of 
Jesus—Incredulity strengthened by his discourses—Jus- 
tification of the urgency of the Jews—Reiterated de- 
mands for proofs—Refusal, and evasive replies of Jesus 
—The people beseech him to make himself known; he 
refuses. é ° ; ‘ 54 
Boox VI. aSFenele aecibes: to himself a divine patie its 
at first hesitates and confines himself to the remission of 
sin—Various instances—Mary Magdalene—Hebrew doc- 
trine as to the forgiveness of sin—Unequivocal declara- 
tion of his divinity by Jesus—Indignation of the Jews— 
Jesus is deserted by his disciples—Statement of the sen- 
timents of the Hebrew people—Doctrine of Judaism on 
the Unity, IMMATERIALITY and INVISIBILITY of God— 
Unalterable attachment of the Hebrew people to this be- 
lief—Penalties pronounced against prophets who taught 
belief in other Gods . ; ‘ 69 
: Bow VII.—Conception of the ilasaar of ee ay gs 
_lyptic traditions respecting the advent of the divine reign 


CONTENTS. 281 
PAGE 
—Character of the predictions of Jesus on this point— 
The kingdom of God according to the doctrines of Juda- 
ism, from the human and supernatural points of view— 
Superiority of the Jewish doctrine to that of the Gospel_ 87 
Book VIII.—Jesus forsaken—Order for his detention— 
He is betrayed by Judas—His apprehension—Personal 
violence of the Roman soldiers—St. Peter’s denial—Exa- 
mination of Jesus—Preparation for his trial and sentence 
—Jesus before Pilate—Appeal to the people—Barabbas 
—Predictions of Jesus concerning his condemnation and 
death—Execution of Jesus—Cruelty of the Roman exe- 
cutioners—-Last entreaties of the Jews—Last words of 
Jesus—His death . , . : ; = ‘ 99 
Book IX.—Resurrection of Jesus—His interment by Jo- 3 
seph Arimatheus—Application of the Pharisees to Pi- 
late—The resurrection of Jesus occurs unseen by wit- 
nesses—Public opinion concerning his disappearance— 
Events posterior to the resurrection—Discrepancies in 
the narratives of the Evangelists—Jesus appears to Mary 
and to several of his disciples, without being recognised 
—Doubts of the apostles—The episode of Emmaus—- 
General observations . ‘ ° ° ‘ : ‘ 113 
Book X.—The morality of the Gospel—The Jews always 
held the moral precepts taught by Jesus—They opposed 
the assertion of his divinity only—The morality of the 
Gospel is identical with that of the Bible—Important in- 
novation for the Pagan world, but not for the Jewish 
people—Parables—Man lives not by bread alone—The 
righteous shall live by faith—The Sellers driven from the 
Temple—Suffer little children to come unto me—The 
lost sheep—Respect of Jesus for the ancient law—Mo- 
rality of the Pentateuch cited by him as a condition of 
eternal salvation—The Prophets and Jewish ceremonial 
—Simplification of the law—Hypocritical Pharisees . 125 
Book XI.—Sermon on the Mount—Analogy between its 
teachings and those of the Holy Scriptures—Form adop- 
ted by the final editors of this Sermon—Aim they had in 
view—Similarity between the Sermon on the Mount and 
various passages of the Bible and of the Hebrew sages— 





282 CONTENTS. 


PAGE 


Anger—Evil desire—Retaliation—Hatred of an enemy 
—Alms—Prayer—Treasures of Heaven—Trust in God— 
Not to judge others. Summary . . 
Book XII.—Bad trees should be nest Ware Cam nale 
intrare—Reverence for parents—From those who have 
nothing, much shall be taken—The first shall be the last 
—The rich excluded from the kingdom of heaven—New 
Sermon.on. the. Mount.2.2:66 50 wis c0h. 3 seh Hw 


bp i 
o> 


- PART THE SECOND. 


Book I.—Events subsequent to the death of Jesus—Tenac- 
ity of the incredulity of the Jews—Moral DEICIDE— 
Double obiettions > oe ee. eee 

Boox II.—Development of Christianity—Respect ayieee 





143 


164 


- 175 


by Jesus for the Jewish law~—Prohibition against union | 


with the Gentiles—Convictions and aims of the Apostles 
—Their words and acts after the death of Jesus—Their 
obedience to traditional ordinances—Saul, disciple of 
Gamaliel—His inspiration on the road to Damascus— 
He abandons the conversion of the Jews and undertakes 
that of the Gentiles—He abolishes the law—Progress of 
Paulism—Opposition of the Apostles—Paul goes to. Je- 
rusalem ise ° ee tus ° ° ° . 
Boox III.—Conference and compromise at Jerusalem— 
Paul adheres at first to the resolutions therein adopted— 
He soon deviates from them—Conflict at. Antioch—The 
resistance of Paul—Epistle to the Galatians—Immutabil- 
ity of the law—Epistle of Jamesin support of.the law— 
Insubordination of Paul—Conflict at Corinth—Paul re- 
turns to Jerusalem—He there makes public apology—He 
is put in prison and sent to: Rome—Summary 4 . 


179 


193 


Book IV.—Paul and Peter at Rome—Their. preaching— . 


Their punishment—Religion and the State—A glance at 
the characteristics of the society in Rome—Slavery— 


Conquest—Military rule—Pretorians—Prodigality of the 


public expenditure—Popular games—Private luxury— 
The treasury—Depopulation of towns--Neglect of agricul- 
ture—General distress—Power of slaves and freedmen— 
Religious and moral degradation—School of Aiexandria 


CONTENTS. 283 
PAGE 
Means employed by the Apostles for the attainment of 
their object—Secret societies--Philosophical transactions 
—Influence on domestic circles . . ° » 205 
Book V.—The works of God and works of Res Blt: 422 
progress of Christianity—Schisms and heresies—No here- 
sies among the Jews—Analysis of the principle heresies 
arising during the first three centuries—Council of Nice 
—Final establishment of Roman Catholicism—General 
outline of the Catholic Church since that period—View 
necessarily taken thereof by the Jews ° . o 9 225 
Book VI.—Last objection—The Jews universally punished, 
in consequence of the condemnation of Jesus—Justice 
and mercy of God—Judges and contemporaries of Jesus 
Christ were not punished—Political and religious causes 
of the persecutions of the Jews, and of the hatred of which 
they had been the victims—Their material and moral 
position in respect to the Roman Empire—Their position 
in respect to Christian society—Results ° . . 238 
CONCLUSION _ . . ° ° ° . ° . » 255 
APPENDIX . : . : ome). We + 270 














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